Poesiomat at Gulliver, or Reading About Airships
DOX Centrum současného umění, Prague
The Gulliver airship on the roof of DOX received its own Poesiomat – a "poetry machine" – for its 10th birthday. Visitors can come to a live reading from stories, poems, letters, and diaries of those who once fell in love with the charm of the airship – both as travelers and as enchanted landlubbers.
The evening's programme explores how Hermann Hesse experienced his first balloon flight in 1911, how D. H. Lawrence captured the sight of an air vessel over wartime London at night, and how captains of giant airships remembered flying over pyramids or the North Pole in the 1930s. Texts inspired by the Gulliver airship itself will also be heard. The live reading can only be experienced during this single evening; visitors will be able to listen to recordings from the Poesiomat anytime in the future.
Texts for the Poesiomat were read by: Kryštof Bartoš, Pavel Batěk, Aňa Geislerová, Ester Geislerová, Jan Hájek, Petr Konáš, Miloslav König, Václav Vašák, Vojtěch Vondráček, Jiří Vyorálek, and Jan Zadražil.
Text authors: Richard Brautigan, Lincoln Ellsworth, Hugo Eckener, Seamus Heaney, Hermann Hesse, Marie Iljašenko, Roy Knabenshue, D. H. Lawrence, Ernst A. Lehmann, Jay Meek, Jan Němec. Poesiomat network project in the Czech Republic: Ondřej Kobza. Text selection: Michaela Šilpochová. Production: Helena Bartošová.