Since 2015, we have been deploying Poesiomats in Czech and international cities. These are attention-grabbing tubes that resemble the periscope of a submarine. They have a crank that when you turn, the Poesiomat charges up and starts telling the story of the place where it stands. Originally, they were mainly jukeboxes for poems. Over time, the concept has changed. Today Poesiomats recite poems, tell stories, memories, sing songs or hum like a river.
We created the design of Poesiomat together with Jitka Tomsová. The shape of the pipe evokes a kind of exhalation from the subway. Or the trumpets on steamboats. The words of the poem are mixed with a passing tram, with a screaming child, with flying birds. Maybe we'll experience the place we've been walking all our lives in a different way.
Poesiomats can be found in several places in Prague, in Brno, at the railway station in Pardubice, at a viewpoint above the confluence in Mělník, at abandoned churches in the Sudetenland, at castles and chateaus all over the Czech Republic. Abroad, Poesiomat poems in Paris, New York, Dublin and Astana, Kazakhstan.
