The third edition of the International Poetry Festival "Orpheus - Plovdiv 2020" opens with a presentation of the 12 participants, poetic reading and promotion of the novel "I came out" by the Metropolitan of the European Diocese of the Macedonian Orthodox Church Father Pimen on September 24, Thursday, 18 h. in the Small Basilica of Plovdiv.

On September 25 at 10.30 h. there will be a Writers' Forum also in the courtyard of the basilica. The topic of the discussion between poets, students from the Humanitarian High School "St. St. Cyril and Methodius ”, students and doctoral students from Plovdiv University "P. Hilendarski" is "The figure of Orpheus - between myth and moment."

On the evening of September 25 at 18:00 h. again in the Small Early Christian Basilica of Plovdiv, is the award ceremony and the final reading.

Please, provide masks. Places are limited due to the requirements for public events in the conditions of COVID-19, but there will be an opportunity to communicate with the guests in the courtyard of the basilica, and at night in Plovdiv.
All official events of the festival will be broadcast online in real time at https://www.facebook.com/plovdivonline, so you can watch them on your mobile devices or computers.

The focus of this year's festival is the modern poetry and prose of the Republic of Northern Macedonia.

Special guests, apart from the 12 poets in the program, are Father Pimen, Metropolitan of the European Diocese of the Macedonian Orthodox Church based in Malmö, Sweden, author of a nostalgic love novel, and the director of the Cultural Information Center of the Republic of Northern Macedonia. - the playwright Sashko Nasev.
Welcome!

The International Poetry Festival "Orpheus - Plovdiv 2020" is supported by the Municipality of Plovdiv and is part of the Cultural Calendar of the city for 2020.

The full program can be found on the official website of the festival https://orpheus-plovdiv.eu/

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The third edition of the International Festival of Poetry "ORPHEUS - PLOVDIV" 2020 will be held from September 24 to September 26, decided the organizers of the Plovdiv LIK Foundation and the participants in the forum.

The change from the originally announced dates from 7 to 9 May 2020 is required because of the prolonged state of emergency in our country as well as in the countries where the participants come from.

We thank our partners for their understanding - the Municipal Institute of Ancient Plovdiv with the Small Early Christian Basilica, which is the traditional scene of the festival for the third year, the NORD Hotel, St. Nicholas Restaurant, the Directorate of Culture and Archeology of the Municipality of Plovdiv.

The enthusiasm of all this year's participants from 9 countries around the world is exceptional. With even greater desire, they want to visit Plovdiv and empathize with the lovers of fine literature and their brothers at the feast this fall, for which we thank them, said Anton Baev, Director of MFA ORPHEUS - PLOVDIV.

The multilingual site of the festival is active, where all the works of the participants have been uploaded in their native language and also in English and Bulgarian and can be read for free. The PDF format of both book publications with the works of the participants are uploaded on the website www.orpheus-plovdiv.eu. They can also be downloaded and read in especially in such isolation times.

Initially, we offered our guests a possible online edition of the festival, but everyone categorically preferred to delay in time, but the communication should be live at all costs, said Anton Baev. We thank them all the more that the travel expenses - airline tickets and other transportation are all on their own expense.

The project "International Festival of Poetry ORPHEUS - PLOVDIV 2020" is a creative product of the Plovdiv LIK Foundation and is being implemented for the third consecutive year. It gathers in Plovdiv, the oldest living city in Europe, with 45 foreign poets from 16 countries. The project is part of the Cultural Calendar of the Municipality of Plovdiv for 2020.