Event: June 2021

Sat
12/6/21
06:00 PM

22. poesiefestival berlin | online

FORUM: EUROPE’S DIVERSITY HAS NO SKIN
Delicate paths in the garden of languages

Event-Picture: FORUM: EUROPE’S DIVERSITY HAS NO SKIN<br>Delicate paths in the garden of languages

Lection & Talk

With Roberta Dapunt, poet (ITA) | Aurélia Lassaque, poet (FRA) | Nikola Madzirov, poet, essayist and translator (MKD) | Johan Sandberg McGuinne, writer, poet and translator (SWE)| Elan Grug Muse, poet and essayist (GBR) | Hosted by: Asmus Trautsch, poet and philosopher (DEU)

Tickets 3€ | Festival Pass 19€

online auf poesiefestival.org

Europe is often perceived as one historic and cultural community, as one economic area, and as one political and bureaucratic organisation. If we look at the poetry of Europe, what we see instead is a continent brimming with multiplicity that cannot be reduced to a common denominator. Present-day Europe is becoming increasingly more pluralistic, as the diversity of ways of life, customs and traditions and languages demonstrates. To be sure, there are fewer languages in Europe than in other continents, but they are in close proximity to each other. More than 140 languages are spoken here, and that is not counting a large number of dialects and sociolects. And nothing stands still – languages affect each other, multilingualism is on the increase and new languages become established on what has hitherto been a foreign place through migration.

The FORUM is devoted to the beauties, problems and challenges of this linguistic diversity within Europe and beyond. What does language difference mean in an area of common political action such as the European Union? How ambivalent is the diversity of languages between promotion of nationalisms and acknowledgement of regional differences? How do languages create and destroy communities? What role does multilingualism play in the resilience of democratic and open societies? How do poets deal with their multilingualism that includes the bigger and smaller languages of Europe?

Can Dündar, former editor-in-chief of the newspaper Cumhuriyet, will be casting an eye in his lecture on Europe’s (linguistic) diversity from its position as Turkey’s next-door neighbour and the internal view of an exile living in Europe. In the panel discussion, Kristina Cunningham, Levke King-Elsner, Jürgen Trabant and Zoltán Danyi will discuss ambivalences inherent in the wealth of languages, social and political developments and translation tasks for the EU. The poets Roberta Dapunt, Aurélia Lassaque, Nikola Madzirov, Johan Sandberg McGuinne and Elan Grug Muse let us hear their poetry and essayistic language portraits in Ladin, Occitanian, Macedonian, Southern Sámi and Welsh and swap ideas about minority languages and their relationship to the more widespread languages in poetry.

Reading and discussion in English with German subtitles.

Project leader: Asmus Trautsch

Forum: Europe’s diversity has no skin acknowledges the kind support of the Artists-In-Berlin Programme of the DAAD, the Embassy of Sweden, Arts Council Wales and Literature Across Frontiers.