The first press conference organized on the occasion of the approaching 57th Bitef festival also presented this year’s slogan - Strength, Don’t Let Yourself Be Anyone’s.
It is a line from the poem forest, plow, primrose, by Radmila Petrović, a young and successful Serbian poet.
“This line represents the best link between all the performances in the main programme”, the artistic director of the festival, Nikita Milivojević, explained, mentioning that the poem is from her collection My Mother Knows What Happens in Cities.
This slogan also inspired the visual identity of this year’s festival.
Here you can read the whole poem by Radmila Petrović.
forest, plow, primrose
I feel the souls of female
ancestors
who suffered at men’s
hands
they clung to me when
I left for Belgrade
and now they won’t go home either
they say to me: slice them like aspic!
with a look or
a kitchen knife?
or the penknife I carry in my pocket?
I will, just not this one
especially not this one! they order me
of all I could have been in the world
I was just a woman, says
Radovanka
in the countryside, we never thought
much of dogs
and being a woman was worse than being a dog
your great-grandfather was like a spring
says Dobrosava, cold and
cross
we slept in a brandy vat
when he brought me to this house
he hanged me like a cat that ate all the chickens
and all that was because of the brandy
strength, don’t let yourself be
anyone’s
get out of my poems!
you too only wanted sons
who later smashed your
heads
you learned nothing from misery,
old women
it was all in vain
Translated from the Serbian by Jovanka Kalaba and edited by Ellen Elias-Bursać.
