Ihar Babkou

Ihar Babkou

IHAR BABKOU (Homiel, Belarus, 1964) graduated in philosophy at Belarusian State University in Minsk in 1986. He underwent internship training in London (1992), Warsaw (1995), Paris (1999) and Berlin (2008). The winner of literary prizes: Hliniany Vielies (1992) and Zalataya Litara (2005). Author of poetry books Solus Rex (1991), A Hero of the War for Transparency(1998)andTofallasleep, to awake, to listen to the voices of fish (2009),the novel Adam Klakocki and his Shadows (2001), and books of essays The Kingdom of Belarus: Interpretation of Ru[i]ns (2005), The Philosophy of Jan Sniadecki (2002). Translated J. Joyce, J. D. Salinger, W. B. Yeats, P. Celan. In the 1980s, he participated in the first samvydat (self-published) publications, as well as in the first independent meetings in Minsk. He took part in relaunching the weekly Nasha Niva, creating a new non-soviet Belarusian culture. In 1995, he founded the publishing house “Euroforum”. He is the author and signer of Belarusian Declaration of Freedom. His works have been translated into Polish, Ukrainian, German, Czech and Hungarian.

LITERATURE AS A BORDERLAND

I’d like to present a new project that finds itself in the borderland – between literature, knowledge about literature and knowledge from the perspective of literature. The project is entitled “Beyond the Horizon of Europe” and it endeavours to tell about the place and the context. About a slightly different Belarusian literature – the literature that emerged in the late 1980s. But to tell it in a different way.Being