Lucas Cejpek kicked off the Friday evening, which alternated between prose and poetry, and for the finale, the two together, brought together in a poetic and musical performance. The Vienna-born Austrian writer and filmmaker was participating in the festival for the first time, but as he says:”The International Elias Canetti Society is well known to me for organizing international meetings of authors in Ruse, which I liked years ago as a very good place for readings and discussions.” Encirclement is used to set a variety of narrative tones or styles, from reportage to list poems. The starting points are everyday stories that the first-person narrator loads with meaning by constantly making new connections to other things. As for the author’s expectations from meeting the audience in Ruse, he says: “My essayistic work combines experience in all fields, so let’s surprise each other.”

An hour later, at 19.00, was the presentation of Tom Schulz, a freelance author in the field of poetry, prose and transcriptions. He is a lecturer in creative writing and poetry workshops at various universities. He lives in Berlin. He came to Ruse with “Travel warning for Countries Oceans Ice Bergs.“. All the texts in the poetry collection refer to the present. At the same time, however, they show us that the present and its judgments, condemnations and rejections thematized in the poems must be seen in a broader context. Tom Schulz comes up with another book of his own with the intriguing title “Moving the Stumbling Blocks.” One can always stumble. Sometimes the stumbling block is one’s own memory at the sight of the setting, and sometimes the impression the setting gives. The sequel followed in the live meeting with Tom Schulz on Friday… It was a very smooth transition to the last event of the evening entitled “THE SONNET.” 20. 00 was the starting time of a poetic-visual-musical performance inspired by sonnets by Shakespeare, Schlegel, Sidney, John Dunn, Ivan Vazov, Nikolai Liliev, Dimitar Panteleev, Peter Velchev, as well as original sonnets by Martin Pashov and Dimitar Pishev. It features actors from the troupe of the State Puppet Theatre in Ruse. The music is by Dimitar Pishev and Martin Pashov,
The scenography and spatial solutions are by Tanya and Georgi Pasev, multimedia, video and photography by Momchil Mihailov-Momo.

The full festival program, news and interviews with participants can be found on this website