Poetry Night with Margaret Atwood, Paul Muldoon, Haris Vlavianos, Jay Bernard

Margaret Atwood, a two-time Booker Prize winner, may be a world-famous novelist, but she started out writing poetry. Her poems feature observations and reflections and are often inspired by fairy tales and myths that have fascinated her since childhood. Important themes in her prose works, such as feminism and saving the climate, also find expression in her lyrical work, where they are transformed into states of personal interiority.

Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whom »The Times Literary Supplement« called »the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War«, has published more than thirty collections of poetry. His poetry is characterized by allusions, a subtle wit, wordplay, unusual rhymes, and a subtly inventive use of meter.

Haris Vlavianos is a poet and translator who ventures down what Michael Longley calls »the dark alleys of language«. His poems, beautifully crafted, precise, and clear, show the power of words to record and transform our experiences, to give us the means to respond to the violence of History and face up to the fragility of life.

Jay Bernard’s artistic output is multidisciplinary, critical, queer, and grounded in extensive archival work. The poems from the volume »Surge« take up the so-called New Cross Fire events, when thirteen Black teenagers died in a fire at the house at 439 New Cross Road during a party in southeast London in January 1981 – the cause was never properly explained. Based on this incident, Jay Bernard recounts the long history of racism in Britain.

Moderation: Maren Jäger
Speakers: Frank Arnold, Julia Malik
Language: multiple languages