Every city has its own face, and poetry of space. It does not manifest itself in the height of the buildings, the density of buildings or street intersections. In some sense, the spirit of the city defies explanation, it is extremely difficult to put into words. The same goes for the city where the literature festival HeadRead takes place. Tallinn is not a metropolis, yet it contains many completely different landscapes: the stature and stateliness of the Old Town, the glossy glass of the sky-scraping City; the rather sleepy and dusty slums, the private houses under the pine trees, the numerous dormitory towns that are almost identical to each other, yet distinctly different at the same time. Tallinn can be entered via the entrances of three main highways and it is like entering completely different cities: coming from St. Petersburg, you find yourself among chimneys and concrete; coming from Riga, you enter a cosy area where the houses a tucked away behind trees; coming from Tartu reveals how small the city really is in size – there is hardly another European capital, where the airport is located so close to the city centre, as there are but a few capitals, where the balcony of the government building has a view to suburban slums.
Cities also often feature in books and stories. Sometimes they are especially highlighted in the twists and turns of the events, so that they are no longer merely a background for the plot but their structure is directly connected to the personalities and fates of the protagonists. At times, the city becomes so important in a work of literature that the story leaves the pages and takes on another life – there are instances of organised tours according to some novel set in that particular city. A similar event will take place in Tallinn in connection with our festival – on Friday, May 27, at 6 pm, traveller and story-teller Ott Sandrak will take enthusiasts on an English tour around the Old Town, to trace the steps of Apothecary Melchior, the creation of Estonia’s best known fantasy writer Indrek Hargla, who has set his stories in medieval Reval. Hargla’s stories bring out another important outline of Tallinn – how it has changed through time. All cities surely change this way. However, the metamorphoses of Tallinn are connected to its location by the sea, the shifting sea border, as well as to all the historical disruptions and breakdowns that have shaped it. It is quite possible that the Tallinn locals of today would have trouble finding their way around their home town as it was some fifty years ago.
This seems to be the end of the connection between cities and literature. On first glance, it may seem that the city can only serve as a frame for one literature festival alone. However, already now, when the festival HeadRead takes place for the third time, it can certainly be said that it is a Tallinn event; a creative feast belonging in Tallinn.
The writers who live and visit Tallinn leave their mark on the city life and the city will be flashing through their future works.
| | | | ................. | On behalf of the organisers,
Jan Kaus |
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HeadRead is a celebration of literature taking place in Tallinn, in the course of which we try to show a cross section of the things going on in Estonian literature, helping the guests of the festival also to some glimpses of the world literature.
HeadRead has grown out of two literary events with the tradition of several years – Sotsia and the Poetry Festival of Nordic Countries have kindly handed their best qualities down to us.
We would like to introduce some writers who are well known in the world and not unknown here, and also present some new authors whose work is well worth keeping an eye on in the future. We will also try to give an idea of the literary texts created in Estonia this year, and their authors. And quite naturally we try to create an environment where people who care for literature can meet and talk. | | | | ................. | | Karl Martin Sinijärv | | CHAIRMAN OF THE ESTONIAN WRITERS' UNION |
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| HeadRead festival goes to Tartu | | Two young writers, Riikka Pulkkinen (born 1980) from Finland and Katrina Kalda (born 1980) from France will meet their readers in Tartu... | | >> read on | | |
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