Submission: October 05, 2016
Registration: October 01, 2016
Language: English
Location: Concept
Prizes: Publication, exhibition
Type: Open
We can only begin this invitational text by apologizing that we are a little late: on March 5th there were 50 years since Anna Akhmatova’s death. Fatally, it seems in cultural matters women still, despite occasional good intentions, come second… But we launched the competition for Alberto Giacometti late too… and just “by accident” we learned about Akhmatova’s commemoration this year.
But better later, than never.
So we launch now a celebratory competition for a woman and a poetess, thus doubly “other.”
But Akhmatova’s success was significant and durable.
After all, how many women had the chance to become Modigliani’s model for 20 paintings and drawings…?!?
And how many women had as an ancestor someone related, it seems, to Genghis Khan…?
Akhmatova was a great poet.
But how to design a house for a great poet…?
Very simply: by reading her poetry. Reading as much and as intensely as possible.
WE NEED MORE POETRY IN THE WORLD AND MORE POETS.
Maybe one day we will have again kings and queens and presidents who are not only lawyers and economists and businessmen and army people, but also poets… and maybe even calligraphers, if possible.
Why not…?
But to return to Anna Akhmatova, this “Queen of the Neva” and “Soul of the Silver Age”.
There was death, a lot of death, around this great poet… her ex-husband was executed, great poets like Mayakovsky and Esenin and Marina Tsvetaeva committed suicide…
But Akhmatova remained…
She remained to write poetry and to testify, as only a true poet can, about the miseries of history, about the injustices so very present in human life, about the mystery of human existence, about all the major themes of life and death.
We urge you to “find” time to read her poetry.
And to feel and think.
And then to imagine A HOUSE FOR ANNA AKHMATOVA.
At a time when no poet is able, upon her or his death, to gather thousands of people at her or his funeral… as she did.
Let’s learn again from the poets!
Let’s imagine A HOUSE FOR ANNA AKHMATOVA.
The deadline is the 5th of october, 2016. Please send us ANY work, ANY size, ANY format to info@icarch.us. Please register, freely, until October 1st, 2016. We will publish all the works received on our website and we will organize an exhibition with the best works received.
