Poetica 10 - »Why do we come places where no one understands us?« Lesungen und Gespräche mit Lina Atfah, Hiromi Itō und Sjón

In the organizer's words:

In her cycle Unkraut am Ufer , translated here for the first time from Japanese into German, Hiromi Itō stretches the space of poetry as far as the prairie steppes: children emigrate with their mother to the edge of some foreign landscape, constantly in transit, incomprehensible - to themselves and others. What remains are gestures, each child a guest in its own life - "a growing, laughing, living body".
The poems of Syrian-born poet Lina Atfah, who has lived in Germany since 2014, also tell of transit and existential placelessness. Grieving and angry at the violence that devastates her old homeland, tender and tentative in her new home, which first approaches her in the robotic voice of a German "Navi": "You have reached your destination". Language here is a shelter in which memory and arrival are in constant dialog: "Where should I go with my poems? - Dig a grave in the pillow and sleep, that's how dreams come true".
Sjón's poems tell of arrivals in dreams or in the "trance museum" of life. His texts come across as floating and inhabitable, like little parables about how the imagination of every single person can be an accommodation if you shift your perspective. "To see this better, I closed my left eye."

Moderation: Yoko Tawada
The German translations will be read by Kelvin Kilonzo and Katharina Schmalenberg.
In cooperation with the Japanese Cultural Institute.

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The event will be held in German and English.