This Friday at noon, the venerable Polytechnic Museum is hosting #ПолитехLive, a poetry marathon of more than 50 poets and readers that will last until midnight. Aired here on the museum’s YouTube channel, it will hosted by the poet and dramatist Andrei Rodionov.
Among the poets whose work will be read: Dmitry Vodennikov, Linor Goralik, Yevgeny Lavut, Yelena Fanailova, Dmitry Kuzmin, Galina Rymbu, Yelena Kostyleva, and Alexander Delfinov. Two poets, Aigel Gaisina and Diana Arbenina, will recite their own works.
The readers are a who’s who of Russia’s most esteemed and beloved cultural figures, including Kirill Serebrennikov, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Yuri Saprykin, Marina Brusnikina, Ivan Vyprypayev, Alyona Doletskaya and many others.
The Polytech Museum was founded in 1872 and soon began to hold lectures by some of the greatest figures in the scientific world. But in period leading up to the 1917 Revolution and right after, the Museum began to hold cultural events. Here the Jack of Diamonds art group argued for their new avant-garde art and a young poet named Vladimir Mayakovsky recited his first verse in public. The Big Lecture Hall hosted such writers and Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Vsevolod Meyerhold.
After a break of several decades, it opened its doors again in the late 1950s and 60s to the new generation of Thaw era writers and poets. One of the performances was filmed by Marlen Khutsiev for his film “I Am Twenty” and has gone down in history as the apotheosis of Thaw era culture.
The Museum is under reconstruction, but you can read more about this institution in English on the site.
Meanwhile, dip into the poetry marathon over the day. If you miss something, you can view the entire 12-hour performance on YouTube later.
