Days of Poetry & Wine »Chus Pato About Open Letter to Europe 2022«
Moderator: Petra Lesjak Tušek
A panel with this year’s author of the Open Letter to Europe, Chus Pato, a preeminent poet and critical thinker, addressing Europe and shining a spotlight on the most pressing issues of our time. Open Letters to Europe are translated to several languages and published in major international media and delivered to all Members of the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and the European Commission.
Chus Pato (Ourense, 1955) writes in Galician and is the author of 11 books of poems, published between 1991 and 2019. Her books are translated and published in USA, UK, Canada, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Netherlands, and Bulgaria, and her poems have been included in dozens of Galician, Spanish, and international anthologies. She has performed at at poetry festivals throughout Europe and in the Americas and her work has been honoured with various prizes including the Spanish National Critics’ Prize and, twice, the Losada Diéguez Prize. Pato lives in the centre of Galicia in NW Spain, near the forest of Catasós, home to the oldest chestnut trees in Europe. Her most recent published book is »Un libre favor«, translated by Erín Moure as »The Face of the Quartzes« (Veliz Books, 2021). She is a member of PEN Galicia and the Royal Galician Academy.
In 2017, Days of Poetry and Wine, one of the most prominent Central European poetry festivals, launched the Open Letter to Europe project. The letters from the project are addressed to Europe, or, perhaps, to the whole world, and aim to bring the language of art, thought-out, precise and rigorous, back to public discourse. Each year, the art director of the festival, with their team selects a preeminent poet or thinker and gives them the unique opportunity of addressing Europe and presenting the problems they consider the most pressing
All Open Letters to Europe are published at www.versoteque.com and as separate publications.
The Open Letter to Europe is part of the ArtAct project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
