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The “Bardic Autumn 2024” ended in Podlasie

The 29th Bardic Autumn Festival ended in Bialystok with a viewing and discussion of the documentary “to stay in the time that has passed” about the poet from Bielsk Podlaski – Nadzieja Artymowicz. She died shortly before last year’s festival and she was a long-time fan of it.

The film’s director Marek Wladimirow shared that he called the film the words he took from his heroine: “To stay in the time that has passed. These are words of Hope and these words say a lot about herself. She lived in her own world for many years and wrote beautifully about it, very romantically, but lived in it, despite the fact that time was moving forward.”

This year, the Bardic Autumn Festival covered musical and literary events not only in Bialystok, but also in Hajnowka and Bielsk Podlaski.

The organizers, participants and guests of the Belsky part of the festival say.

“Bielsk Podlaski is the birthplace of the Bardic Autumn, and it is difficult to imagine the Bardic Autumn without Bielsk Podlaski and Bielsk Podlaski without the Bardic Autumn. We are worried, thinking about the future, but we are also very happy”.

“We love Bialystochyzna and Podlasie very much. Bialystok is the first foreign city in which I played a concert once, so I am reverent. And there is also such a Belarusian factor, presence, both in Bielsk, and in Hajnowka, and in all these villages and towns. That’s why it’s such an expensive area for us, and we really love coming here, and the audience is so warm here.”

“We must make the history and culture of the national minority a part of our common history, so that it would not be two different parallel stories, so that it would still be a single road, a single historical context. And this is the task that I see before us today.”

Traditionally, the Mikhail Aniempadystay Literary and Artistic prize was awarded at the Bardic Autumn in Bielsk Podlaski. Sviatlana Dziamidovich and Lukasz Lewandowski received the award for the graphic design of Nasta Kudasava’s poetry collection “Near”.

In Hajnowka, the festival began with an acoustic NaviBand concert and a performance by the writer Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu at the Hajnowka Belarusian Lyceum. About two hundred lyceum students gathered in the hall.

For NaviBand musicians, performing at the festival is like performing in a family circle. Says Artsiom, the vocalist of NaviBand: “it’s a cozy event for us, for the soul, to come, to relax our soul, to keep up, to see, consider, our native places. After all, everything here reminds of home. Therefore, we are very pleased. We performed several times. That was about five years ago. Now we are recreating it in a new composition. It’s nice to be back.”

Poet and writer Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu shared his impression of the performance in Hajnowka: “I was in Hajnowka for the first time in 1982, when there was a state of war in Poland. And it was also unclear what could be here. But one thing was clear, Poland would not end. Well, it’s just impossible. I was sure that nothing bad would happen to Belarus, because all the students here, who in 1982 listened to my speech in this very hall, spoke Belarusian as one. And all the teaching was in the Belarusian language. Today I came here and I expect to find out, because I know the policy that is being pursued today with regard to Belarusianism in Podlasie, that maybe 10 percent here will understand me.”