2014-15: Mediating Modern Poetry

About
rilke

'Mediating Modern Poetry'

 

Knowledge Exchange Fellow:
Professor Karen Leeder  |   Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages   |   University of Oxford

Partner Organisation:
The Southbank Centre

 

Professor Karen Leeder has been working with the Southbank Centre, London curating a series of events exploring aspects of modern European poetry and its transmission. A first focus was a specially curated evening exploring the reception of Rainer Maria Rilke for the biannual festival ‘Poetry International’ (July 2014). Rilke’s influence on modern culture is inescapable and has inspired poets from Auden to Zwetayava along with filmmakers, thinkers, composers and artists. Professor Leeder also organised the event ‘After Rilke’ featuring major English-language and German poets and their wide-ranging responses to the poet and his life (translations, versions, new poems). This fed into Leeder’s own project on ‘An English Rilke’, which teases out what makes an author travel like this and what happens to them en route (tackling a wide range of issues along the way). Thereafter a series of further events in Autumn 2014 explored aspects of contemporary poetry in dialogue with major English and European poets.

 

 
Past Events

2014-15: Mediating Modern Poetry

 
reflections of translating poetry
 
What if not Transformation | Poetry after Rilke (July 2014) 
A look at the afterlife of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke with today's poets. 
Reading with Sujata Bhatt, Durs Grünbein, Patrick McGuinness and Don Paterson, introduced by Karen Leeder. 
 
Responses to Rilke | Post Show Discussion (July 2014) 
Sujata Bhatt, Durs Grünbein, Patrick McGuinness and Don Paterson in conversation with Karen Leeder. 
 
Volker Braun | Twenty-Five Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall (November 2014) 
The launch of Volker Braun, Rubble Flora: Selected Poems (New York, London, Calcutta, Seagull Books, 2014), the first collection of his poetry in English and covering poems over 50 years. 
Volker Braun read and answered questions with David Constantine and Karen Leeder. 
 
Requiem | The Great War (February 2015) 
The launch of poetry magazine Agenda's November issue Requiem: The Great War. Readings by poet Michael Longley and others.  
 
Perspectives on Poetry | Ulrike Almut Sandig performs in London (February 2015) 
Perspectives on Poetry:
Ulrike Almut Sandig performed in London Poet in the City and Mediating Modern Poetry presented an evening of new perspectives on poetry. German poet Ulrike Sandig joined in conversation by the artist Sebastian Reuter and her UK translator Karen Leeder. 
 
Ulrike Almut Sandig Reading (March 2015) 
A bilingual performance of poetry and prose including specially commissioned new work and translations, sound art, film and a discussion of her new volume Buch gegen das Verschwinden (2015). 
 
Perspectives on Poetry (May 2015) 
Poet in the City presents the second event in the Contemporary German Voices series, bringing together two leading poets from Germany and the UK. Celebrated poets Don Paterson and Durs Grünbein drew on a common understanding of poetry, joined by translator Karen Leeder. 
 
Dead as a Dodo? Four tales of why and how literature saves lives. Ulrike Draesner gives the first Eugene Ludwig Lecture (February 2017) 
Ulrike Draesner presented the first Eugene Ludwig Lecture associated with her time as Writer in Residence and Visiting Fellow in New College and TORCH.  
With: 
  •  
  • Ulrike Draesner (writer; Visiting Fellow, TORCH)  
  • Andreas Kossert (Fellow at the Foundation for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation, Berlin) 
  • Katie Brown (Teaching Fellow in Hispanic Studies, Bristol) 
  • Mette Louise Berg (Senior Lecturer, Social Sciences, UCL) 
  • Geetha Reddy (Psychology, LSE) 
Poetry Reading by Michael Krüger and Paul Muldoon (January 2018) 
Two masters of the craft for a poetry reading and discussion of poetry, politics and translation with Michael Krüger and Paul Muldoon. 

 

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