The new “Poem as a Journal” explains what place poetry occupies in our lives Culture

The guest editor of “Poem as a Journal” is Jean Max Kolar, art critic, curator, writer, head of the Word Art Department of the Pompidou National Center for Art and Culture.

“It is a great pleasure and honor for me to be the guest editor of the new Poem As a Journal. I see this issue of the magazine as a kind of research in which we find out what place poetry occupies today in contemporary creativity and in our lives. So, my colleague Luize Bruner and I tried to play with the name of the magazine in order to compare the form of the poem with other fields: the poem as a magazine, as a film, as an exhibition, as sex, as yourself, but not as a war,” said Jean-Max Kolar.

Photo of the publishing house/”Poem as a Journal”

Together with the magazine’s editor Kotryna Lingienė, 35 artists, creators and poets from the USA, Lithuania, France, Switzerland, Ukraine, Germany became co-authors of “Poem as a Journal”.

According to the editor of the magazine, Kotryna Lingienė, inviting a curator from another country was an ambitious decision, even though he already had international experience, when Damianas Lentinis, an Australian-born curator working in Germany, presented a sensitive and careful overview of the sound scene in our country in the publication “Soundscapes as a Journal”.

“This time it was different – Jean-Max Kolar represents one of the world’s great cultures, the influence of which reaches the farthest corners, which is also reflected in the content of the magazine compiled by him and his colleague Louise Brunner.” It was interesting to hear which Lithuanian creators the French will choose to present, and their decision made me happy. The voices of Ukrainians also found a place in this non-poetically poetic magazine, for which I am sincerely grateful to the poet Maris Buroks,” said Kotryna Lingienė.

The designer of the issue is Miglė Rudaitytė-Černiauskienė, founder of the BOY design studio. According to Miglė Rudaitytė-Černiauskienė, the aim set by the editors of this issue to consider the poem not only as a text work, but also as a visual object encouraged design experiments.

“I started by deconstructing the poem – the object – and this suggested several answers to me: few words, silent pauses, rhyme turning into rhythm, repetition creating sequences. Although it may sound like an old truth, one conclusion never left me: a poem is really an image, you just need to think and examine it with your eyes longer – to pay more attention to what is happening between the lines in order to see things that are a little more hidden.

I hope that this design will be a strong ally for the primary and most important thing – the content of the magazine and will help raise the art form of poetry a little higher – among other, already celebrated forms of cultural art,” said Miglė Rudaitytė-Černiauskienė.

The magazine, published for the fourth year, changes its name along with the topic under consideration. Readers have already been invited to get to know the forest, space, soundscapes, physicality, memory and others.

The new number can be purchased online in Lithuania on the website, as well as in the MO museum bookstore. Abroad, the magazine is distributed byAntenne Books“, you will find all trading points here.