Poets brought together at the Presidential Library

November 10, 2018 Poetic Club designed to bring together poets, readers, performers and connoisseurs of literary activity in one area was opened in the Presidential Library.  

The Poetic Club of the Presidential Library invites you to join poetry lovers of different ages. The main idea is historical succession. The club organizers are going to “create the poetry of today, while preserving the country's cultural heritage and its moral values”.

Members of the Poetic Club can not only share their creativity, but also become readers of the Presidential Library, learn about rare books and archival documents from its electronic collection. Each meeting of the club will be a historical journey and a musical and poetic recollection of the outstanding masters of the past, as well as acquaint with new names and modern works of Russian authors.

The first meeting of the club was devoted to the work of A. A. Blok. Employees of the museum, dedicated to the poet, as well as representatives of the Writers' Union of Russia, the House of Writers, the author's song club “Svet” from the city of Pushkin, readers and members of the Presidential Library attended the event.

As part of the memories of Blok, rare materials from the Presidential Library collections were presented – they are documentary sketches of the poet's fate and his first steps of his career as a writer.

The electronic reading room of the Presidential Library provides rare book of literary critic Nikolai Ashukin “A. A. Block in the memoirs of contemporaries and his letters", published in 1924. It reflects precise words of Korney Chukovsky, revealing the depth of the personality of Alexander Blok: “... He was all overflowing with music, which flowed from him in plenty. He was one of those darlings of music for whom to create was to listen attentively, who know neither strain nor tension in creativity”.

The electronic collections of the Presidential Library contain a number of modern studies on the work of the famous poet: “A. Blok and the European Middle Ages", "A. Blok and E. T. A. Hoffman: Romantic Traditions in Symbolist Poetics“, “Images of Earth and Vaults in the Symbolist Picture of the World by Alexander Blok”, “Lexical Objectification of the Concept “Petersburg” in the Art Picture of A. Blok’s World”. The library’s portal presents a lecture by O. B. Sokurova “Historical dominants of the new Russian literature: A. S. Pushkin, F. M. Dostoevsky, A. A. Blok” from the series of video collections “Knowledge of Russia”. Finally, our electronic collections feature amazing book “The Last Days of Imperial Power: Alexander Blok made up the unedited documents”.

However, on Saturday evening, November 10, the Presidential Library performed poems not only by A. A. Blok, but also by modern Petersburg poets, members of the new Poetic Club of the Presidential Library. Let us introduce you to some of them.

Olga Atamanova, a poet and mathematician, a member of the Writers' Union of Russia, positioned herself in the following way: “I think it’s quite difficult for the reader to understand modern literature, the flow of information is great. I want my work to help me learn as much as possible about the best poets of our time”.

Another member of the new poetic association - the poet and musician Elena Nalivayeva (Jupiteriana) - claims that music and the word in her life are inseparable. In her “time free of poems” she lectures on musical literature and the history of music, and she herself plays ancient music with pleasure.

Singer-songwriter Svetlana Astapchik composes poems and music for her songs. Sometimes - texts on the already prepared melody of other composers or a melody to the poems of other poets. Svetlana is a student and winner of a large number of festivals and literary awards, the leader of the “Solnechny Svet” music group, and the head of the songwriter “Svet” club in the city of Pushkin.

The participant of the Poetry Club Dina Filatova began her career with the association of poets “Ya”. Today she is the head of the vocal group “KHOREU”, sings and plays in the VIA “Love is Near”.

Participants "KHOREU" performed today. “Most often we perform a cappella, although we love and experiment with accompaniment ... We learn, work, laugh and sing. Our repertoire is as varied as we are: in it, works characteristic of traditional academic choirs are combined with samples of popular pop music and folk motifs”, - this is what the guys say about themselves.

Pavel Strautnieks a musician, leader of the Ilmus group, organizer of the St. Petersburg Chayniye Kvartirniki preformed at the opening of the Poetic Club in the Presidential Library.

The word and music this Saturday joined hands. Closing the event, the initiator of the creation of the Poetic Club and the main bibliographer of the customer service department of the Presidential Library Maria Bishokova promised that such meetings would be regular. But the place for them will remain the same - the electronic reading room of the Presidential Library on Senate Square, 3, in the heart of the Northern capital.