Versopolis podcast

About Versopolis podcast

The Versopolis Podcast explores contemporary poetry by a wide range of poets and poetry experts. Hosted by Dr Mitja Drab each episode delves deep into a specific topic, giving a unique perspective of the most exciting literary voices today.

Publisher

Versopolis

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

23 Feb 2023

Latest episode

28 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

42 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   28 Sept 2026

   Versopolis Podcast #42: A Hat of Glass

   »FEDORA – VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Dance Prize 2025 Winner« In this special series of the Versopolis podcast, poets from the Versopolis network recollect their impressions of premieres of FEDORA Prize-winning works by writing a poem. The invited poet experiences the performance, the artistic creation process surrounding it, and the atmosphere of the premiere from an audience member’s point of view. Gentlemen’s Jack is a ballet that premiered in May 2026 and won the FEDORA – VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Dance Prize 2025. Its prima ballerina, Gemma Coutts, plays the part of Anne Lister, a 19th-century entrepreneur often referred to as ‘Gentleman Jack’ and today regarded as the world’s first modern lesbian icon. Among the audience at the premiere in London in May 2026 was Ruth Lasters, the incumbent Poet Laureate of Belgium, who wrote a poem in response to the piece. We talked about why the ballet, inspired by the unconventional 19th-century entrepreneur Anne Lister, is relevant today and how themes of identity reverberate throughout the years. Why does loving mean losing all self-deceit? What happens when the hat worn by Anne Lister falls from her head in the middle of rehearsals, and why does the hat turn to glass in the poem? Ruth Lasters is an award-winning Belgian poet and novelist. Her debut novel, Poolijs/Polar Ice, won the Flemish Debut Prize in 2007. Her poetry collections include Vouwplannen/Folding Plans, Lichtmeters/Light Meters, and Tijgerbrood/Tiger Bread, which received several major poetry awards. Her work has been translated into German, Spanish and French, most recently Désirs à l’essai/Trial Desires (2026). Lasters has performed internationally at festivals including Poetry International. In 2022, she resigned as City Poet of Antwerp after the city rejected a poem addressing educational discrimination, an act that earned her the Ark Prize of Free Speech in 2023. In 2026, she became Poet Laureate of Belgium. Gemma Coutts is a ballerina from New Zealand who grew up in Thailand where she trained at the Aree School of Dance Arts in Bangkok. She continued her training in London and graduated at the English National Ballet School. Gemma is now in her fifth season at Northern Ballet. In that time she has experienced a range of corps and soloist roles which have allowed her to develop her artistic range and confidence. She was the principal ballerina in the ballet Gentlemen’s Jack which premiered on May 2026 and won the Winner of the FEDORA – VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Dance Prize 2025.

2. 

   31 Aug 2026

   Episode #41: The Unwritten Rulebook of Identity

   The multilingual poet Natalija Milovanović has firmly established her poetics with her second book of poems, Tuja mehkoba (Foreign Softness), which won the Veronika Prize for the best poetry collection in Slovenia of 2025. Talking about language and identity, she explains that a poem usually arrives to her in Slovenian, even though she was born in Niš at the height of the Yugoslav wars. It is mostly the subject that decides the language: the more intimate the topic, the more likely it is to be written in her native tongue. Her poems explore identity with a refined, unhurried sensibility, a reflexive attention to language and a contemplative response to the world. Such writing is emerging as the epitome of a poetics of post-national borders, one that transgresses and travels between languages and countries seamlessly. Without ever losing sight of a sense of belonging, these poems decipher the unwritten rulebook of things held to be self-evident, but that nevertheless change without fail every time a border is crossed. Natalija Milovanović (1995) is a poet and translator with a completed master’s degree in translation studies. She writes in Slovenian and Serbian. Her debut collection Samoumevno (2021) won the award for best literary debut at the Slovenian Book Fair; her second, Tuja mehkoba (2025), received the Veronika Award and was shortlisted for the Jenko Award. Both appeared in 10 Books from Slovenia. She translates poetry and prose between Serbian and Slovenian, and since 2025 has been executive producer of the Pranger festival. Her poems have been translated into eight languages.

3. 

   29 May 2026

   Episode #40: Writing From the Edge of Empire

   ‘Human life is not more interesting or worthwhile because it occurs in the centers of capitalism.’ That’s the tagline of Peripheries, the online journal co-run by Katja Perat, who joined us for the 40th edition of the Versopolis Podcast. Katja’s early poetry collections, which earned her a cult following, were written against the backdrop of the 2008 global financial crisis and captured a specific moment: Slovenia drifting into neoliberalism under the cover of liberal democracy. Her relationship with poetry at the time was, she says, fraught, shaped by a tendency to hyper-intellectualize rather than feel. After earning her PhD in 2022 into a brutal humanities job market, she took a position teaching English at a communitycollege in northern Alaska, the northernmost in North America. The move tied together her longstanding fascination with the Far North and her commitment to minor languages: teaching in a community where Iñupiaq is spoken, she draws a quiet parallel to her grandmother’s work with Slovene as a minority language. ‘There’s an untapped wealth of literary inspiration in these spaces where the rural collides with the urban,’ Katja says, ‘the literary markets just isn’t as interested in covering peripheral knowledge. And I think, just from an epistemological perspective, that’s a huge loss.’ Katja Perat is a Slovenian poet, novelist, essayist and journalist whose work spans multiple literary forms and languages. She published her first poems in 2007 in the Slovene literary magazine Literatura andthe bilingual Slovenian Bosnian magazine Dignimo pero/Dvignimo pero. Her debut poetry collection, The Best Have Fallen (Najboljši so padli, 2011), received the Best Debut Award and the Kritiško sito Award from the Slovenian Literary Critics’ Association. Her second collection, Value-Added Tax (Davek na dodano vrednost, 2014), was nominated for both the Jenko Award and the Veronika Award. That same year, her work appeared alongside Eileen Myles in Fear of Language, the third issue of Sternberg Press’s Poetic Series. Her novel The Masochist (Mazohistka), translated into English by Michael Biggins and published by Istros Books in 2020, has taken on an international life of its own in translation, earning a nomination for the Dublin Literary Award. In 2019, she published the essay collection Make America Graspable Again. A Slovene immigrant and minor language speaker, Perat holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. As a scholar, author and teacher, she explores the relationship between complexity and accessibility, and brings her transcultural, multilingual background to the writing classroom.

Who has been a guest on Versopolis podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Theresa Lola
• Marija Dejanović
• Katarina Gomboc Čeh

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 50 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

73

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

68

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.