Poetry Box

After turning the crank, an iron tube will offer the cultural, sports and natural icons linked to the town and the region. The audio tracks offer, for instance, a dialogue from The Firemen’s Ball, the famous movie by Milos Forman which was filmed in Vrchlabi, the sound of water from the River Labe, or Olympic medal-winning performances by Karolina Erbanova and Eva Samkova, both born in Vrchlabi.

The Poesiomat, or poetry box, is located on namesti Miru Sq. in Vrchlabi, near the Church of St. Lawrence and close to a relic of the old water flume, through which the water from the River Labe flows again today. This famous Czech river is used in several motifs in the poetry box, including the sound of the Labsky waterfall, the Labe flowing to the port of Hamburg, or a poem by Jaroslav Vrchlicky presented by the architect David Vavra.

Each poetry box, as the author Ondrej Kobza says, has its own site-specific dramaturgy made in collaboration with the local institutions to make it best fit with the social, cultural and natural importance of the town. It works as a symbolic memorial plaque of the town, quite diverse in the case of Vrchlabi. It provides a cute overview of various topics: from fairytales to sports achievements, from the recipe for a local sour soup to quotes from The Firemen’s Ball by Milos Forman. The Vrchlabi poetry box covers a wide range of topics, including poetry and prose as well as some unique sounds from the past as well as the present.