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This week in Czech Books we are gripped by poetry fever. The Czech Republic is in the middle of an international poetry festival, the "Den poezie" - or Poetry Day. As we'll be finding out, the festival reaches some of most far-flung corners of the Czech Republic; we also explore what makes the "Generation 2000" of young Romanian poets tick, as they bring their work to a Prague audience.

This week we look at a very fruitful literary friendship between one of the best known contemporary Czech poets, Petr Borkovec, and the Prague-based Irish poet, Justin Quinn. Not only are they good friends but they have also worked closely together, with Justin translating a great deal of Petr's work. They may come from different ends of Europe and diverse literary traditions, but in many ways the two poets are kindred spirits. Justin Quinn joins me in the studio.

If you listen to Radio Prague regularly you will probably be familiar with the political scientist and academic Jiri Pehe, who has written widely on political developments in the Czech Republic over recent years and is often interviewed on our programme. You may also remember that for several years in the second half of the 1990s he was an advisor to President Vaclav Havel. It is also quite possible that you will have come across some of his essays on Czech literature. But it will probably be as much a surprise to you as it was to me that Jiri Pehe

When I was in London this summer, I found myself with some time to spare, waiting for a train at Liverpool Street Station. I made a point of going out to the small open space on the south side of the station, known as Hope Square. Here you will find a plaque and a monument to remember the children of the Kindertransports.

For this edition of Czech Books we are at the Philosophical Faculty of Prague's Charles University to meet one of the most respected professors at the university. Dr Martin Hilsky is a professor of English literature and is very well known in this country for his translations of Shakespeare. He has translated over twenty of Shakespeare's plays and also much of his poetry. Dr Hilsky is a central figure at the annual Summer Shakespeare Festival, which ended recently and is one of the big cultural events of the summer. Many of the productions we see

The award-winning recent novel, "The People's Act of Love", by the British writer James Meek, has an amazing cast of characters. It is set in the vast isolation of Siberia in 1919. At the height of the Russian Civil War, it brings together an escapee from a prison somewhere in the far north, a small fundamentalist Christian sect, who believe in castration as a liberation from the temptations of this world, and a company of Czech and Slovak soldiers, marooned thousands of miles from home by the dramatic events of the time; and the backdrop is one

Edith Templeton is a writer who defies categorization. Born in Prague in 1916 and still alive at the age of 90, she has had an adventurous life. Her work is every bit as adventurous. Here is a description by a Los Angeles Times reviewer: "Imagine Jane Austen and D.H. Lawrence sharing an engrossed conversation about social snobbery and the wolfish pursuit of obsessive sex and you have something of Templeton's atmosphere." Bernie Higgins has become fascinated by Edith Templeton's work and life and tells us more.

In Czech Books this week, we look at award-winnning Irish writer John Banville's relationship with Prague, a city which features in a number of his books, including his personal travelogue Prague Pictures and the historical novel Kepler, which is set in Prague during the reign of Emperor Rudolph II.

The great floods of August 2002 may have been the worst for a century, but they certainly were not the first to hit the Czech capital. Here is a poetic description of a similar disaster way back in 1596.

Vladislav Vancura is one of the best known Czech writers of the period between the First and Second World Wars. At home he is a household name, but if he is not well known abroad, this comes as no surprise. Vancura has often been described as untranslatable. His prose is very poetic, and some would say that his writing has dated. This has not stopped the translator Mark Corner from taking up the challenge of translating what is probably Vancura's best known book "Rozmarne leto", which he translates as "Summer of Caprice" into English. Mark Corner