19. poesiefestival berlin: the first World Climate Poetry Summit!
09.05.2018
Poetry has long been concerned with the topic of climate change and embraces its effects on humans linguistically. The poetry talk "World Climate Poetry Summit" and the reading "Climate change in poetry"invite poets of four continents to examine the poetic potential of this topic and its political dimension. The integration of political commitment and poetic complexity is also evident in the work of the author and activist Ketty Nivyabandi from Belgium / Burundi.
Save the date:
World Climate Poetry Summit
Saturday 26 May 2018, 6 pm
Academy of Arts, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
Poetry Talk with the poets Tsead Bruinja (Netherlands) | Imtiaz Dharker (Pakistan) | Kendel Hippolyte (St. Lucia) | Jessie Kleemann (Greenland) | Outspoken (Zimbabwe)
Presenter: Daniela Seel (Germany) editor, poet | Arne Riedel (Germany) Ecologic Institute
Extremes of temperature and tornadoes are occurring ever more frequently. The polar ice is retreating, and the rising sea level has already engulfed the first inhabited Pacific islands. Climate change is threatening the human race. But what do two degrees of global warming actually mean, and what happens if they are exceeded? Poets are reacting to these facts. This Poetry Talk will involve a discussion in political as well as poetic terms of what poetry can contribute to the subject of climate change and what it can do to raise awareness of the topic.
Climate change in poetry
Saturday 26 May 2018, 8 pm
Academy of Arts, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
Reading and talk with the poets Tsead Bruinja (Netherlands) | Imtiaz Dharker (Pakistan) | Kendel Hippolyte (St. Lucia) | Jessie Kleemann (Greenland) | Outspoken (Zimbabwe)
Presenter: Daniela Seel (Germany) editor, poet
Global warming excites the imagination – at least of those who deny that it is happening. Donald Trump thinks that the Chinese invented it to harm American industry, and the right-wing AfD twists cause and effect by claiming that mass migration to Europe is one of the causes of global warming. These and other crude theories cannot alter the fact that islands in the Pacific are disappearing under the waves, glaciers are melting, hurricanes and floods are making whole areas of land uninhabitable and droughts are accelerating the impoverishment of whole regions. Climate catastrophes have long been setting off waves of refugees, and in Europe, too, it is not just Holland that is affected when state dyke extension programmes are planned.
Poetry has been dealing with this subject for some time. It can engage with the visible and invisible effects of climate change on people and make them tangible through language. In a conversation and reading, Caribbean poet Kendel Hippolyte reminds us that we would treat the world around us differently if we were to understand nature to be our own mother; British-Pakistani poet makes climate change a personal, private and tangible matter; and Greenlandic poet Jessie Kleemann writes her melodic texts in Inuit, a language and culture in which nature and the sound of language are directly interwoven with each other. Tsead Bruinja is concerned with what the threatening consequences of rising sea levels will mean for the Netherlands; while Outspoken from Zimbabwe “captures” drought in poetic ways.
As acoustic accompaniment, the German musician and performance artist Kalle Laar has created a sound carpet of natural catastrophes.
German translations of the poems are available.
Poetry Talk: Ketty Nivyabandi “On the pavements of starving boulevards”
Sunday 27 May 2018, 5 pm
Academy of Arts, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
With Ketty Nivyabandi (Burundi) writer and activist, in conversation with Adams Sinarinzi (Burundi) writer
The work of Ketty Nivyabandi (b. 1978 in Uccle, Belgium) is one of those rare cases in which political engagement meets poetic complexity. Nivyabandi’s poems reflect the history of her country, Burundi, from which she had to flee in 2015, in the mirror of her own biography. With the power of her imagery, her flow, she transforms them both into a form of poetic resistance. Her poems are songs of a “shredded nation” of broken-but-whole people” who never cease turning the word “freedom” over in their mouths in spite of war, hunger and persecution.
19th poesiefestival berlin: Values Verse Art
24 to 31 May 2018
Academy of Arts, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
Festival program and advance tickets at: www.haus-fuer-poesie.org
Press Accreditation at: presse@haus-fuer-poesie.org
Please state your name, medium and contact address.
Press photos for download: www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/de/presse
For enquiries and information:
Haus für Poesie
Mira Lina Simon
Press & Publicity
Tel: 030. 48 52 45 24
E-Mail: presse@haus-fuer-poesie.org
The Poetry Talk: World climate poetry summit is taking place in co-operation with the Forum Berlin of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Ecologic Institute (kindly supported by Stiftung Mercator). It is made possible with the kind support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Royal Danish Embassy Berlin, ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen and the British Council in the frame of the UK/Germany 2018 season.
The reading Climate change in poetry is taking place in co-operation with the Forum Berlin of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Ecologic Institute (kindly supported by Stiftung Mercator). It is made possible with the kind support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Danish Arts Foundation, ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen and the British Council in the frame of the UK/Germany 2018 season.
The 19th poesiefestival berlin is a project by the Haus für Poesie in co-operation with the Academy of Arts and acknowledges the kind support of the Capital Cultural Fund and Maritim proArte Hotel Berlin, and is presented by kulturradio rbb, tip Berlin, taz, BÜCHERmagazin and Deutschlandfunk Kultur.