Media Library

VERSSCHMUGGEL BELARUS – GERMANY

• 2021-06-15, 8:00 PM

The focus of this year’s VERSschmuggel/reVERSible translation project is on poetry from Belarus. In view of the current political situation it seems more apposite than ever to let the country’s poets be as loud as possible and to intensify bilateral relationships, especially on levels other than the political one.

Reading & discussion with the poets Julia Cimafiejeva (BLR) | Özlem Özgül Dündar (DEU) | Jonis Hartmann (DEU) | Andrei Khadanovich (BLR) |Uladzimir Liankievič (BLR) |Maryja Martysievič (BLR) | Andre Rudolph (DEU) | Daniela Seel (DEU) | Tania Skarynkina (BLR) | Ulf Stolterfoht (DEU) I Dmitri Strozev (BLR) | Uljana Wolf (DEU) | Hosted by: Karolina Golimowska, literary scholar, translator (DEU)

Six poets from the German-speaking countries come together with six Belarusian poets in virtual space. Together they immerse themselves in the poetically and culturally rich and courageous verse of their opposite numbers, which is then “smuggled” into the respective other language and cultural context – with the aid of gloss translations and language mediators.

The trilingual reading in German, Belarusian and Russian reflects the work process. The dialogues between the poets involved impart an idea of the atmosphere and give an insight into the process of creating poems from poems.

The VERSschmuggel anthology will be published in March 2022 jointly by Verlag Das Wunderhorn and the Belarusian partner publishing house Halijafy.

Reading and discussion in German, Belarusian and Russian with German and Belarusian subtitles.

Curation: Valzhyna Mort, Taciana Niadbaj, Karolina Golimowska

Language mediators: Irina Bondas, Susanna Sophia Kołtun, Vera Kurlenina, Siarhei Paulavitski, Ekaterina Tewes, Tina Wünschmann

With interlinear translations by: Irina Bondas, Iryna Herasimovich, Susanna Sophia Kołtun, Vera Kurlenina, Ekaterina Tewes, Thomas Weiler, Tina Wünschmann

Project leader: Karolina Golimowska | Ekaterina Tewes (assistant)

VERSschmuggel Belarus – Germany acknowledges the kind support of the Goethe Institute Minsk, S. Fischer Stiftung and the Federal Foreign Office.

with Julia Cimafiejeva, Özlem Özgül Dündar, Jonis Hartmann, Andrei Khadanovich, Uladzimir Liankievič, Maryja Martysievič, Andre Rudolph, Daniela Seel, Tania Skarynkina, Ulf Stolterfoht, Dmitri Strozev, Uljana Wolf