  2007 marked a new important line on the activity of Stella Art Foundation. It founded a literary club chaired by Kirill Kovalzi and curated by Evgeny Nikitin. The nucleus of the club is a group of poets-metarealists and poets of the "Poetry" club - Evgeny Bunimovich, Jury Arabov, Mark Shatunovsky, Vladimir Aristov, Alexander Eremenko, Alexander Samartsev, Sergey Strokan, John High, and also young poets Andrey Rodionov, Alexey Korolev, Alexander Pereverzin, Gennady Kanevsky, Igor Karaulov, Evgeniya Vorobyeva and Evgeniy Nikitin. Though the club revives traditions of the legendary studio of Kovaldzi and the club "Poetry", the poetic club in the form we see is the form (however unostentatious) of a dialogue between the modern art and poetry.
This dialogue has been realised in a poetic series «Art-con-Text» where collection works by Alexey Parschikov, Katya Kapovich, Igor Vishnevetsky and Arseny Rovinsky included works by modern artists – Evgeniy Dybsky, Anya Zholud, Oleg Kulik, Stas Polnarev and others. Now are being prepared for publication books by Charles Bernstein, Mark Shatunovsky and Svetlana Zaharova, that will be in the series «Poetry Club» – the second poetic series of the club. Apart from sessions with free dialogue and discussion of texts by separate modern authors, the club also hosts poetic evenings and multimedia actions and performances.
In poetry, worlds are made of words. But then, what the worlds are - words or reality? The word "water" is not drinkable, the word "bread" is not edible. The things are not what we call them. And isn't that one of the poet's missions: coming back to authenticity, an equivalence between the subject and its name, the word and the gesture? To give the world back to a word, one would have to re-create it anew. That would essentially unite "making worlds" and "making words". During our poetry readings we offer everyone water to drink and bread to eat in order to have the words " water" and "bread" regain their actual filling. Poetry operates with words, revealing the hidden resources of language and going beyond the normative conceptualization of reality. Five basic elements, five breads shared among five thousand people - these archetypes are behind the five days that the Poetry Corner will be run at 53 Venice Biennale.
Moscow Poetry Club at Venice Biennale
Visual artist Youla Hatzigeorgiou, in collaboration with architect Giannis Epaminondas, have designed a wooden crate that unfolds and serves as a platform on which poets and other artists present their works and actions. The result will be a specifically designed stage to host our world-making event.
 Each of five days from 3 till 7 June Moscow Poetry Club presents poetic performances, curated by Daniel Birnbaum and Eugeny Bunimovich, which involve Russian, Italian, Greek, Cypriot, American and Austrian poets. The offering of bread and water during all the performances is related to the “Common Cause” installation by Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina in Arsenale, which operates with bread semantics.
While poets are reading their works, artists Alexander Djikia and Anja Zhelud are making real-time graphics illustrating the readers' verses. The poets from the “Russian Gulliver” are presenting two performances, “Hydromachia” (an attempt to charm away floods and rain) and “Defense of the Sun”. Alexander Ponomarev is showing performance by Vsevolod Nekrasov. La Casa delle Parole (Venice) is representing the modern Italian poetry.
List of participants Moscow Poetry Club:
Poets:
Vassilis
Amanatidis (Greece), Yuri Arabov (Russia), John Francis (Italy), Alfred
Goubran (Austria), Riccardo Held (Italy), John High (USA), Gennady
Kanevsky (Russia), Igor Karaulov (Russia), Alexey Korolev (Russia),
Andrea Libin (USA), Vadim Mesyats (Russia), Alessandro Niero (Italy),
Daphne Nikita (Cyprus), Evgeny Nikitin (Russia), Alexey Parschikov
(Russia), Massimo Rizzante (Italy), Andrey Rodionov (Russia), Lev
Rubinstein (Russia), Anna Russ (Russia), Alexander Rytov (Russia), Mark
Shatunovsky (Russia), Andrey Tavrov (Russia), Igor Vishnevetsky
(Russia), Laura Voghera Luzzatto (Italy), Svetlana Zaharova (Belgium).
Artists:
Igor
Makarevich (Russia), Alexander Djikia (Russia), Elena Elagina (Russia),
Anya Zholud (Russia), Giannis Epaminondas (Greece), Katja Margolis
(Italy), Alexander Ponomarev (Russia), Gioula Chatzigeorgiou (Cyprus)
Curators:
Daniel Birnbaum (Sweden), Evgeny Bunimovich (Russia).
Coordinators:
Alexander Rytov (Russia), Evgeny Nikitin (Russia), Christos Savvidis (Greece), Lydia Chatziiakovou (Greece).
Organized by Stella Art Foundation, Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus, Moscow Government, ArtBOX.gr | Arts Management, Moscow International Poetry Bienalle, "Russian Gulliver" Publishing House, La Casa delle Parole.
It is poetry that supports a dialogue of languages through intertextual perception of words; in verses, a person persistently searches for poetry, not just a demonstration of a given language’s features and opportunities. This search is of an essentially international nature, its key problem is the role and meaning of the poetic world, of the worlds that poets create out of words.
Therefore, the motto of our multilingual poetry project, Making Words, necessarily stems from the motto of the 53rd Venetian Biennale, Making Worlds, and the words and verses of poets from Russia, Italy, the United States, Austria, Greece and Cyprus return their original meaning to the notions common to all of the worlds – bread, water, word.
Evgeny Bunimovich
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