
The lyrical subject is not an autonomous, closed self, but emerges within a network of relationships, other voices, historical allusions and places. It is shaped by its environment, the language that precedes it, fragmented attention and new forms of intimacy and distance. The digital network is the most visible form of this connection between people and the world.
Poetry portrays the subject as a shifting node between global connectedness and intimacy, its own voice and the voices of others, bodily presence and other meanings. Against speed, performance and communicative noise, it sets clarity, concreteness and care for the body, objects, places and relationships. In feminist and queer poetry, identity is understood as a relational, embodied and constantly emerging process.
Petr Hruška, Klára Goldstein, moderation Jan Heller, reading Steffi Böttger