poesiefestival berlin: Highlights
08.06.2017
The 18th poesiefestival berlin: Europe_ Fata Morgana starts on 16 June 2017. The Haus für Poesie is waiting to welcome some 170 poets and artists from 42 countries. Wishful thinking, Fata Morgana or reality – the European Union is shaking to its foundations, and with it European values like freedom of thought, artistic freedom, diversity and democracy. The nine-day festival is presenting views of the EU and Europe from inside and outside in readings, concerts, performances and exhibitions in the Academy of Arts. The highlights include the big opening event, Weltklang, a concert of voices and languages, three D poetry featuring three productions spanning text, music and dance, and Just a Word, Europe, which brings together 22 poets from various countries for a multi-lingual installation.
Weltklang – Night of Poetry
Friday, 16 June 7 pm
The 18th poesiefestival berlin opens with Weltklang – Night of Poetry. Poets from various parts of the world read, perform and sing in their mother tongues. An anthology of German translations of the texts is being published specially for the evening.
M. NourbeSe Philip from Canada, whose roots are in Trinidad in the Caribbean, will be reading from Zong!. This concept work is based on a legal report on the deaths of more than 100 Africans on a slave ship. The poems of Scottish writer John Burnside capture the “other life of things”. German poet Dagmara Kraus will be delving into the repository of ancient mourning culture and modern planning language for this evening. Yasuki Fukushima is one of Japan’s most expressive contemporary poets. He will be performing his zekkyō tanka (screaming tankas) with music. Jan Wagner, who in 2015 was the first poet to be awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, combines supreme mastery of form with surprising turns without being traditionalistic.
Other readers at this year’s Weltklang are Arnon Grünberg (Netherlands), James Noël (Haiti), Mila Haugová (Slovakia), Sergio Raimondi (Argentina) and Charlotte Van den Broeck (Belgium).
three D poetry
Saturday, 17 June, 8 pm, repeat performance: Sunday, 18 June, 3 pm
three D poetry moves in the space between music, dance and poetry. At the 18th poesiefestival berlin artists will play with the possibilities of the three genres, sounding out their boundaries and looking for points of contact. The performance Ingesture by poet Christian Hawkey, composer and musician Roy Carroll and choreographer and dancer Maya Matilda Carroll centres on the writings of Charlotte Wolff, a Jewish, German-British doctor, sexologist and writer of the early 20th Century. For n/achtfüssig (n/e/ight-footed), choreographer and dancer Anna Huber and composer and musician Hubert Machnik use unpublished poems by Herta Müller cut out of print media and arranged on postcards. In the third production Schulter von α und anderen, fernen Ländern (Shoulders of α and other distant lands) composer Markus Pesonen and choreographer and dancer Shang-Chi Sun together with the KNM Quartet develop their work from the text die menschen von einst liebten den tanz (people once loved to dance) by Daniel Falb.
Just a Word, Europe
Sunday, 18 June, 8 pm
22 poets from countries adjoining the European Union are meeting at the 18th poesiefestival berlin for the poetic installation Just a Word, Europe. How is the idea of Europe seen outside the European Community? The poets will be presenting their poetic responses to a Europe that is shaking to its foundations. Their texts on realities, dreams and fears in relation to the EU will provide a polyglot experience of many voices. They include Abbas Beydoun from Lebanon, co-founder of the second wave of Arabic modernism, and Yassin Adnan from Morocco, whose spontaneous language brought him to prominence as one of the new poetic voices of the 1990s in the Arab world. The Icelandic poet and artist Sjón is famous for his texts for Björk in Lars von Triers’ Dancer in the Dark.
18th poesiefestival berlin: Europa_ Fata Morgana
16-24 June 2017
Academy of Arts, Pariser Platz 4,10117 Berlin and
Academy of Arts, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
The poesiefestival berlin is a project by the Haus für Poesie in co-operation with the Academy of Arts and gratefully acknowledges the support of the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Auswärtiges Amt.
Festival programme and advance ticket sales at www.haus-fuer-poesie.org
Press photos for download www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/de/presse
Accreditation at presse@haus-fuer-poesie.org
Please state your name, your medium and your contact details.
For enquiries and information:
Haus für Poesie
Jana Bialluch Press & Publicity
Tel: 030. 48 52 45 24
E-Mail: presse@haus-fuer-poesie.org