Prague is a city anywhere in the world. Contemporary poetry inspired by the capital
Nine chapters of a ghostly Prague topography with a prologue, an epilogue and two interludes. Twenty-seven poems by contemporary Czech poets in the author’s interpretation, accompanied by a text collage from the book Praha by the poet Petr Krále, interpreted by Jan Vlasák. Listen to the premiere online for two weeks after the broadcast.
Interpretation: Jan Vlasak
Prepared by: Jakub Řehák
Selection of music and direction: Petr Gojda
Filmed: in 2022
Premiere: 5/9/2022
In a radio anthology of contemporary Czech poetry dedicated to the capital city and its ghostly nooks and crannies, its author, poet and essayist Jakub Řehák, invites us on an unusual walk through inner Prague, a Prague read and written by twenty poets. However, do not expect a celebration of the hundred-year-old mother in the author’s reading zone. From the historical center, we will leave rather suddenly to the Vltava embankment, to Braník, to Anděl, Žižkov, to Letná, to the Vyšehrad casemates.
The poet Petr Král will be our guide in his essay about Prague: “Prague is also a city with a river and a hilly terrain; here, the pedestrian inevitably ascends or descends, approaches or departs from the embankment. With its irregularity and unpredictability, which give a kind of dark familiarity unavailable to cities that are too clear, Prague is also naturally baroque: a city in the form of a fugue, where the streets come together like voices, a city with the gift of sensuality, which always readily has a corner or a bend, sends them to meet and allows you to caress them with your eyes.”