Ulyanovsk UNESCO City of Literature

On September 12, the Literary tram passed through Ulyanovsk UNESCO City of Literature. For the fifth time, the locals traveled around the city at night and listened to the texts of writers from the UNESCO literary cities. This is another event involving the intervention of literature in urban space.

The event was organized by the Agency for Social and Cultural Projects and the Ulyanovsk UNESCO Literary City Program Directorate with the support of the Ulyanovsk City administration.

This year, passengers heard texts from Melbourne, Edinburgh, Dunedin, Bucheon, Nanjing, Slemani, Krakow, translated by Ulyanovsk poet Sergei Gogin, as well as poems from Ulyanovsk poets. The lyrics were dedicated to this year's theme - the rethinking of time caused by the pandemic.

The texts were read by famous people of the city: Yulia Fomicheva, Deputy Head of the Culture and Leisure Activities Department of the Ulyanovsk City Administration; Elena Domashevskaya, the Director of the Civic Education Club, journalist Daria Rykova; the Head of the Office of the Ombudsman for the Rights of the Child in the Ulyanovsk Region, Artur Sirachev; journalist Elena Skvortsova, and a volunteer Kirill Bogdanov.

Ulyanovsk poets Danila Nozdryakov, Igor Ulitin, and Vyacheslav Savin were the special guests of the Literary Tram.

The surprise was a special video prepared for the Literary Tram by the writer from Nanjing Bi Feiyu: he recorded the excerpt about time from his well known novel "Massage". Ulyanovsk residents heard the text translated by the poet Sergei Gogin.

Passengers also heard the poem "Moment" by the Nobel laureate in literature, Polish author Wisława Szymborska. The greetings from Australia were sent by authors from Melbourne Dženana Vucic and Francis Thompson, who wrote the poems especially for the Literary Tram in Ulyanovsk.

Literary tram 2020: the list of the texts

Danila Nozdryakov (Ulyanovsk) - a selection of poems

Vyacheslav Savin (Ulyanovsk) - a selection of poems 

Igor Ulitin (Ulyanovsk) - a selection of texts 

Ivan Goncharov - excerpts from the novel "Oblomov"

Shamal A. Hussein (Slemani, Iraq) - "Why Shouldn’t We See?!" (the poem was translated by Sergei Gogin)

Gael Turnbull (Edinburgh, the UK) - "It’s been", from "There Are Words", 2006 (the poem was translated by Sergei Gogin)

Jenny Longstaff (Dunedin, New Zealand) - "Another Day’s Cycle"  (the poem was translated by Sergei Gogin) 

David Howard (Dunedin, New Zealand) - "Easy Piece for Beginners" (translated by Sergei Gogin)

KO Kyungsook (Bucheon, South Korea) - "Subversive Landscape" (the poem was translated by Sergei Gogin)

Dženana Vucic (Melbourne, Australia) - "every day a yesterday"(the poem was translated by Sergei Gogin)

Francis Thompson (Melbourne, Australia) - "Rescheduling Catastrophe"(the poem was translated by Sergei Gogin)

Bi Feiyu (Nanjing, China) - the excerpt from the novel "Massage" (translated by Sergei Gogin)

Wisława Szymborska (Krakow, Poland) - "Moment" (the poam translated by Asar Eppel)