Poetry Night. Mit Nouri al-Jarrah, Ghayath Almadhoun, Hussein Bin Hamza, Don Mee Choi, Maren Kames, Meena Kandasam

Poetry reading

Poetry Night. With Nouri al-Jarrah, Ghayath Almadhoun, Hussein Bin Hamza, Don Mee Choi, Maren Kames, Meena Kandasam

Friday, September 19, 2019
5:30 pm

NOURI AL-JARRAH [SYRIA/ GB] is one of the most important contemporary poets in the Arabic-speaking world. His collection »A Boat to Lesbos« (2016) has been translated into many languages and is a requiem for Syrian exile.

The poet and filmmaker GHAYATH ALMADHOUN [PALESTINE/ SE] gives a voice to refugees, asylum seekers, the injured, and those left behind with »Ein Raubtier, das Mittelmeer heißt« (2018; tr: A Predator Named the Mediterranean).

Since his escape to Germany, HUSSEIN BIN HAMZA [SYRIA/ D] has written prose poems about the experience of fleeing as a constant within a person’s spectrum of sensations.

With her texts of various genres, the lyricist and translator DON MEE CHOI [REPUBLIC OF KOREA/ USA] positions herself within the area of tension between the legacy of the Korean War and her family history.

MAREN KAMES [D], winner of the audience prize at the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin’s 21st Open Mike (2013), establishes new contexts of meaning in her poetic spaces with the help of linguistic and interconnectedness-related techniques.

MEENA KANDASAMY [INDIA], who wrote her first poems at the age of 17, deals with the Indian caste system and questions of feminism, which are also fundamental to her prose texts.

The central themes of the texts by EILEEN MYLES [USA], »a cult figure to a generation of young, post-punk female who form their own literary avant-garde« (New York Times), are love, loneliness, gender, and America.

QUE MAI NGUYEN PHAN [VIETNAM], whose poems are closely linked to the landscape and nature of Vietnam and have received several awards, is also the translator of six volumes of poetry.

In her award-winning poems, VERA PAVLOVA [RU/ USA] focuses on female themes and experiments with various registers of the Russian language.

JOACHIM SARTORIUS [D], author of several volumes of poetry and poetic travel books, is also editor of the »Atlas der neuen Poesie« (tr: Atlas of New Poetry), arguably the most comprehensive international volume of poetry in recent years.

moderation: Silke Behl
Admission: 12€/ reduced 8€