Samantha Barendson
About the book
Though relatively small, the poetry collection of Samantha Barendson is a well-thought-over, complete project rooted in the profound experience of the loss. The “reconstruction of the father”, who passed away when she was two, takes the form of an almost theatrical string – or a metaphorical train – of poems which carry the daughter to the funeral of the one who preceded her. The landscapes she travels through merge with the landscapes of memory, filling the empty spaces of loss and making headway towards the terminus station – towards the final “Live”.
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Maarten Inghels
About the book
One of the privileges of being a writer – and even more so of being a poet – is that of multiple identities. The poet can be somebody else in every poem – can create trial versions of oneself, and send them into the world, into the hands of the readers – to watch them cope better or worse. Maarten Inghels enjoys that conglomerate nature of his identity so much that he has even established The International Society for the Official Doppelgängers of Maarten Inghels. He tells the reader of the proceedings of this entity, reporting from beyond the grave. Weird? Perhaps. But the poet presents – in a set of distorted mirrors – a world in which everyone can be whatever and whoever they want to be. He offers a Baudrillardian procession of simulacra, a hell of banality, a nightmare of arbitrariness and ambiguity.
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Helen Ivory
About the book
The heroine of Helen Ivory’s poems discovers the mysteries of her family home and casts at her relatives her poetic spells. The origin of these spells lies in a fairy-tale imagination, in a subconscious realm populated by creatures from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, or perhaps even in black magic. In Middle Ages, her metaphors could bring her to the stake. Today, when witches are capable of exorcising reality, she might have to pay the price of popularity. This is Ivory’s poetry: medieval stories against the boring, hypocrite bourgeois post-modernity.
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Josep Pedrals
About the book
There are poets for whom literature is a timeless space, and all of its forms present fundamental human dilemmas in equally vivid and effective ways. Josep Pedrals is one of such poets. His rhymed, rhythmical poems resemble the works of medieval troubadours. Or is the Catalan poet just playing with conventions, testing our tolerance of pathos and historical patina? Even so, his poems invite reflection on the limits of artistic experimentation and of the cult of the avant-garde that modernity has so insistently promoted.
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Music for poems:
Małgorzata “Tekla” Tekiel and Artur Rumiński



Versopolis is a literary platform devoted to poetry, founded in December 2014. Its goal is to support young European authors and promote their achievements beyond the borders of their home countries. The platform is formed by 23 literary festivals, including the European Poet of Freedom International Literature Festival, organized by the City Culture Institute in Gda