Media Library

POETRY TALK: YI WON

I click constantly on the world

Yi Won’s poems oscillate alarmingly between Buddhist traditions, body horror and pessimistic visions of the future – a labyrinth flooded with blood and moonlight. Poetry Talk with her translator Simone Kornappel.

Yi Won

POESIEGESPRÄCH: ARIANA REINES

What. Now what?

Untamed, permeated with American slang and driven by a deep interest in occult practices and spiritual transformations: one of the currently most radical confrontations with sexism, thanatos and late capitalism. Poetry Talk with her translator Léonce W. Lupette.

Ariana Reines

POETRY TALK: LULJETA LLESHANAKU

Small zig-zags and the feel for completeness

Luljeta Lleshanaku’s work is marked by her youth in a Stalinist dictatorship. For decades she was cut off from international influences and invented a tradition of her own, which she still follows today. Poetry Talk with her translator Andrea Grill.

Luljeta Lleshanaku

POETRY TALK: YANKO GONZÁLEZ

With an image of me in mind

Yanko González’s poems explore the margins of society with the eyes of an anthropologist and are works of art that are deliberately left open: wild and truthful, loud and tender, socially critical, avant-garde and witty at the same time. Poetry talk with literary scholar Rike Bolte.

Yanko González Cangas

POETRY TALK: ATHENA FARROKHZAD UND KOLEKA PUTUMA

The heart can’t be freely bent like the knee

On racism and revolution and the way one’s own poems are politically and poetically anchored in the great course of history. Poetry Talk with poet and publisher Daniela Seel.

Koleka Putuma • Athena Farrokhzad

POETRY TALK: MIRCEA CĂRTĂRESCU

I can see more colours than other people

Mircea Cărtărescu’s texts talk about death and fame and are love poems to Natalie Wood, the Beatles and Bob Dylan, but are also the poems of a flaneur in Bucharest. Poetry Talk with his translator Ernest Wichner.

Mircea Cărtărescu

POETRY & ACTIVISM

All political poetry is bad – all poetry is political

What is the social power of poetry? Can poetry be an instrument for mobilising people? How does a political topic affect and influence the language of poetry and how can poetry influence politics?

After the screening, the poets will answer your questions in a live zoom stream on poesiefestival berlin’s Facebook page.

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Dean Bowen • Frank Keizer • Lea Schneider • John Kinsella

WORDS OF OBJECTION

POETRY AS POLITICAL ACTIVISM

Can poetry be used to fight for good? Under what circumstances can activism succeed and contribute to better coexistence?

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Kadhem Khanjar • Bernadette La Hengst • Franck Leibovici • Maud Vanhauwaert

Forum

Digital Revolution and Cultural Memory

How are public discourses and memories changing in the course of digitalisation? What role does poetry play between historically sensitive exploration of language and a digital poetry operating with algorithms?

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Aleida Assmann • Mercedes Bunz

RE:WRITING THE BORDERS

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein). A conversation about borders and limits, literature and politics and poets as activists.

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Nada Al Khawwam • Manal Al-Sheikh • Faraj Bayrakdar • Alice Veil