The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

COLLECTIVE WRITING RITUAL AND ARTIST TALK (in the context of the festival exhibition) – K Allado-McDowell will initiate a collective writing ritual with live visuals by Lucas Gutierrez, Debashis Sinhas immersive sounds, the audience, and the language AI GPT-3. Debashis Sinha will talk with the artists Louise Walleneit and K Allado-McDowell about their work.

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

The warm-up before the start of the 23rd poesiefestival berlin! Poets’ Corner takes over the city with poetry! Berlin-based poets and musicians will read and perform across the city’s districts in libraries, gardens, and cultural centers, thanks to support of Berlin’s city districts and cultural institutions. There’s room for poetry everywhere!

Ruptures in time and space, that which is emerging or that which has long past, utopian and dystopian rooms, several verses for thinking in (intercontinental) possibility: We’re collecting poems on the theme ALL THAT POETRY!

Poems, ponderings, and conversations on young poetry. The 15th anniversary readings of workshops for poets-in-training at the Haus für Poesie offer insights into the “young poems” groups (led by Nancy Hünger and Tanasgol Sabbagh) and the “open poems” group (led by Nadja Küchenmeister).

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

AWARD CEREMONY – lyrix celebrates! The poetry competition for writers between the ages of 10 and 20 will award this year’s prizewinners in the 15-20 age group. More information at bundeswettbewerb-lyrix.de

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

Poems, ponderings, and conversations on young poetry. The 15th anniversary readings of workshops for poets-in-training at the Haus für Poesie offer insights into the “young poems” groups (led by Nancy Hünger and Tanasgol Sabbagh) and the “open poems” group (led by Nadja Küchenmeister).

READING AND PERFORMANCE – Weltklang Night of Poetry is the poesiefestival berlin’s polyphonic opening event. Poets from all over the world will read, sing, and perform in seven languages – demonstrating the richness of contemporary poetry in all its approaches and styles.

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

Halyna Kruk’s poems respond to the immediate reality – even (and especially) in times of crisis and war. She writes about disappearance, fast-flying summer weeks and the heaviness that suddenly settles on our lips. Her poems are messages from an uprooted world that “flees like running thistle behind the humpbacked horizon.”

Mihret Kebede is not only a poet, performer, and visual artist – she also organizes festivals and co-founded Tobiya Poetic Jazz, the artist collective Netsa Art Village, and the video art festival Addis. Her poetry is marked by multidirectional thought and action, transcending the limits of what is individually said in a grippingly political way.

TALKS, READINGS, MUSIC & CONCERT– Western preconceptions about the African continent continue to reflect relations of power and domination that originate in the colonial past. For this evening, poets and specialists from seven African countries will speak about a new globalism, diaspora, and Afrofuturism.

BOOK PREMIERE – In the face of political and social crises that have shaken Belarus for (at least) two years – forcing many of the country’s intellectuals into exile – the Minsk-based Pflaŭmbaŭm Publishing House recently published the „Anthology of (female) Poets“. The Pflaŭmbaŭm Publishing House was founded by Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich in 2019 and is devoted exclusively to women’s literature.

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

On Sunday, the Akademie der Künste will turn into a poetic hidden-object picture: Poets and translators will read in the Buchengarten. Books of poetry and journals will be available for purchase at the book market.

On Sunday, the Akademie der Künste will turn into a poetic hidden-object picture: Poets and translators will read in the Buchengarten. Books of poetry and journals will be available for purchase at the book market.

A poetry lounge for the whole family! Knead fairy tales, craft letter ribbons, paint the alphabet on your body, spoon letter soup, puzzle poetic memories, test reading pens, read poems, rhyme verses, and unravel thrilling language fun together at the poetry market!

We will fold summer animals from the beautiful origami paper, practice Japanese calligraphy, and write bright seasonal haikus. We’ll learn drypoint etching techniques and print favorite motifs. Everyone is invited – only curiosity (and no previous experience) is required!

Poems, ponderings, and conversations on young poetry. The 15th anniversary readings of workshops for poets-in-training at the Haus für Poesie offer insights into the “young poems” groups (led by Nancy Hünger and Tanasgol Sabbagh) and the “open poems” group (led by Nadja Küchenmeister).

Reading a poem or reading a Sunday – the focus of the poetic walking meditation will be resonance as praxis, one in and for which we are bodies before everything else – breathing, listening, and yes, one body among other bodies. No prior experience required.

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

Reading a poem or reading a Sunday – the focus of the poetic walking meditation will be resonance as praxis, one in and for which we are bodies before everything else – breathing, listening, and yes, one body among other bodies. No prior experience required.

Reading a poem or reading a Sunday – the focus of the poetic walking meditation will be resonance as praxis, one in and for which we are bodies before everything else – breathing, listening, and yes, one body among other bodies. No prior experience required.

Raymond Antrobus hails from the London slam and Open Mic scenes. He writes autobiographical poems about his Jamaican-British heritage and about the experience of deafness, with which he was diagnosed with at age six. He is a political poet who writes about very private matters. Ilya Kaminsky and Ocean Vuong are among his admirers.

Michèle Metail (born in Paris in 1950) will trace the history of her own work in 17 chapters: from the “infinite poem,” beginning with a continually-renewing chain of composites, to the “purely oral publications,” which define a text as a “tossing of the word into space,” to the “topographical poems” and the multipart “gigantextes.”

For the third time ever, school classes were invited to engage with the work of an important contemporary English-language voice as part of a competition organized by the British Council and the Haus für Poesie. This year, young people composed a poetic response to the poem “Silence/Presence” by British Ted Hughes Prize winner Raymond Antrobus.

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

A poetry workshop on themes of silence and presence. Jamaican-British poet, poetry communicator, and climate activist Raymond Antrobus describes himself as an “investigator of missing sounds;” his poems bring new sounds to our relationship with nature and climate – as well as to the relationship between hearing and deaf people. No prior knowledge is required.

WORKSHOP (in the context of the festival exhibition) – This workshop is dedicated to the reality-forging possibilities of language. Participants will visit the festival exhibition AI ANCESTORS along with curator Rike Scheffler.

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

Agustín Fernández Mallo is a physicist, novelist and poet. He belongs to the “Nocilla” movement, which derives its name from Fernández Mallo’s trilogy of novels, a punk song, and a nougat cream. His poetry – described as “afterpop” or “zapping literature” – is at once hypnotic, enigmatic, and deeply unsettling.

PERFORMANCES – Three ensembles will present hybrid and experimental performances at the intersection of poetry, dance, and music.

READING, TALKS AND MUSIC – “Moosbrand” hails from a time when magazines still helped establish authors, books and debates. “Moosbrand“ was founded in 1993, a self-published bibliophile booklet with texts and illustrations from a group of artist friends who met for regular readings at Peter Huchel’s house in Wilhelmshorst.

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

Julia Wong Kcomt hails from a Chinese-Peruvian family and lives in Lima and Lisbon. The diasporic experience is formative for her texts, which move between Brazilian and Argentine poetry. Critics have praised her poems’ evocative tone, calling them “enigmatically sensual invitations to hypervigilance” (Brandon Shimoda).

FILM PROGRAM, READING AND TALK– Because the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festivals in 2020 and 2021 could only take place on a limited basis, we are showing a selected program with the winning films.

READING AND TALK WITH REVERSIBLE AUTHORS – Poets from multiethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina will speak with their verse-smuggling partners from the Alpine region about their experiences with multilingualism, dialects, and a “common” language.

READING – This year’s reVERSible translation workshop will feature poetry from four successor states of the former Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Four cultural institutions from the four countries are gathering to make such an encounter possible.

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

HEALING RITUAL WITH GONGS (in the context of the festival exhibition) – Healing ritual with sound bath, from Singh Soin’s newly-published book of poems and prayers, “Ancestors of the Blue Moon.”

Kim Yideum’s poetry is polyphonic, wild, and feminist, teeming with quirky personnel. With explicit eroticism, dirty sentences and a maximum of lyric energy, she exposes patriarchy’s crustiest structures – not only in Korea. Kim Yideum teaches in addition to writing, at the university, runs a bookstore and café in Seoul, and publishes her own publication series.

READING, TALK AND MUSIC – Developments in Iran over the past few decades have forced countless writers into exile, often with little more than their own language in tow. “As much of the fatherland as I have in my suitcase” is a poem about exile by the poet Esmail Kho’i, who passed away in London in 2021.

HEALING RITUAL WITH GONGS (in the context of the festival exhibition) – Healing ritual with sound bath, from Singh Soin’s newly-published book of poems and prayers, “Ancestors of the Blue Moon.”

PERFORMANCE AND ARTIST TALK (in the context of the festival exhibition) – “What might you recover on earth?” Rike Scheffler performs musical rituals of transition: Haunting, sensual poems from a possible future, resounding as echoes to us today.

Who are “we?” Where do community and kinship begin and end? For whom do humans feel interest, responsibility, love, and empathy? What if humans were to enter into an open dialogue – not only with one another, but also with other animals, with plants, with fungi, or inorganic life forms past and present?

What connects us all – and what makes us who we are? For the second time ever, inclusive teams of poets and artists from the RambaZamba studio group with physical, psychological, and mental disabilities will embark on a fascinating search for the origins of poetry and art.

READING AND TALK BEFORE THE PREMIERE – His poems are terrifyingly relevant to this day: Over 40 years ago, Aras Ören poetically compacted Turkish migrant workers’ lack of prospects, their illusions of life in Germany, and Turkey’s social reality in his “Berlin Trilogy.” In his writing, bleak and everyday life in Kreuzberg’s Naunynstraße epitomizes many places in Germany. Aras Ören testified to the odyssey of “nameless nobodies.”

A PRODUCTION PREMIERE – Starting in Kreuzberg’s Naunynstraße, Aras Ören’s long poems „What does Niyazi want in Naunyn Street“ “The brief dream from Kağıthane,“ and „The Foreigner is also a House“ published between 1973 and 1980, tell the stories of Turkish migrant workers – of their dreams, their fears and hopes – and also of Germans who lived in Naunynstraße for generations. The poesiefestival berlin will bring the “Berlin Trilogy” to the stage in 2022 in an adaptation by poet Björn Kuhligk, staged by director, translator, and actor Leopold von Verschuer.