Here in Georgia our festivals are full, but our poets are in prison – and now we feel abandoned by Europe | Archil Kikodze

Anti-government protests continue, but our young people are leaving. Increasingly destitute cultural gatherings have become my places of solace ‘They want us to stop seeing each other, to lose contact, to feel alone,” the Icelandic writer Sjón told me. By “they”, he meant the dark forces rising across the world: populists, fascists, fundamentalists. That was in September 2025, at the Tbilisi international festival of literature, attended by more people than ever before. The halls were full, a...

By Archil Kikodze