First meeting of "Poets about Poets" series of Presidential Library Poetry Club held

On 23 April 2025, the Presidential Library hosted a musical and poetic multimedia composition "And their souls to wander in flowers...". This is the first event of the Poets about Poets cycle of the Poetry Club, where contemporary St. Petersburg poets read the classics of Soviet poetry of the last century: Bella Akhmadulina, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Bulat Okudzhava.

The musical and poetic multimedia composition was divided into three thematic blocks: "friendship", "love", "life". The event was built as a poetic dialogue between poets, whose life and creative youth fell on a special time of "thaw" - the second half of the 50s and 60s of the twentieth century. Experiencing various events of their lives and the country, they reflect on the most important, enduring values: love, friendship, the power of goodness, justice, duty to the fatherland, loyalty, faithfulness, honour, attraction to their homes, generosity, sincerity. The dialogue was complemented by quotes from the poets themselves about each other and their contemporaries.

Multimedia materials, photographs, musical fragments and artificial intelligence technologies were used to illustrate the Soviet era of the mid-1950s - early 1990s.

The author of the cycle "Poets about Poets" is a poet, film director, screenwriter, representative of the literary creative association (LITO) "Bronze Age of Poetry and Prose" Surya Severa. The event was also attended by Andrei Mitroshin, poet, film composer, director, member of the artistic council of LITO "Bronze Age of Poetry and Prose"; Vladimir Kuznetsov, poet, musician, representative of the literary creative association (LITO) "Bronze Age of Poetry and Prose".

The cycle of the Poetry Club "Poets about poets" is intended to familiarise with the national poetic history and the best examples of the latest time, to attract attention to poetry of senior pupils, students, cadets, all those who are interested in the Russian art word and its history. One of the important tasks is to arouse a keen interest in poetry, to show that it can be fascinating and exciting.

The events of the cycle are created in a special format of literary and musical compositions using multimedia capabilities of the Presidential Library.

Talented, bright, actively writing, publishing and performing authors who are also editors, publishers, scriptwriters, directors, writers, translators, laureates of poetry and literary contests and festivals, participants and organisers of many cultural events in St. Petersburg are invited to lead the Poetry Club.

Contemporary poets participating in the programme perform works by national poets of the past, talk about the most vivid moments of their lives, reproduce excerpts of autobiographies, memoirs and reminiscences of their contemporaries, using the historical background of the epochs to which the authors belonged.

The recording of the event is available on the Presidential Library's portal in the Live broadcasts section in accordance with the programme of live broadcasts of events, as well as on the institution's Rutube channel, in the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.