Mikhail Nemtsev
Inna Krasnoper
German Lukomnikov (online)
Maxim Goryunov
Dinara Rasuleva
Boris Filanovsky
Arseniy Rovinsky
Mikhail Eisenberg (online)
Ilya Danishevsky
Anna Glazova
Nikita Sungatov
Evgeny Nikitin
Linor Goralik
Yulia Podlubnova (online)
Dmitry Kuzmin
The poetry festival is a fixture at the Berlin Book Fair. Compared to 2025, the number of participants has grown significantly, so the performances have been split over two days. Twenty-four poets will perform, representing Russian-language poetry from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, but who have more or less recently found themselves in Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, France, Poland, the United States, and various cities in Germany. Six more authors, including some from Russia, will join the readings via video link.
The festival program is designed to be as diverse as possible, presenting a diverse range of voices and styles. Poems aimed at breaking linguistic inertia are juxtaposed with texts that seek to subvert sociocultural conventions, while subtle psychologism and metaphysical depth are complemented by poignant political statements. Participants in the festival include figures from all active poetic generations, from the central figures of the uncensored late Soviet poetry movement to today's 20-year-olds who emerged on the scene in the current decade. Female voices are prominently represented in the program.
The project coordinators were Evgeniya Lavut, Yulia Podlubnova, Alyosha Prokopyev, and Dmitry Kuzmin.