Mediating Modern Poetry

Saturday, January 27, 2018 - 6:00pm

The Queens College

Shulman Auditorium

A very special opportunity to meet two masters of the craft for a poetry reading and discussion of poetry, politics and translation

Michael Krüger and Paul Muldoon

Saturday January 27^th (Sat. 2^nd week), 6pm.

Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College, Oxford, OX1 4AW

Entrance is free but places are limited so those interested should reserve a place by emailing karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Karen Leeder

Contact email: 

karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Audience: 

Open to all

Friday, February 24, 2017 - 5:00pm

New College, Oxford

McGregor-Matthews Room

Ulrike Draesner will present the first Eugene Ludwig Lecture associated with her time as Writer in Residence and Visiting Fellow in New College and TORCH.

Tickets are free, but please sign up by contacting karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

In association with Fractured Stories? Narratives of Migration. Roundtable at Ertegun House, University of Oxford, 10am, Saturday 25 February 2017 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).

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Karen Leeder

Contact email: 

karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Audience: 

Open to all

Tuesday, November 22, 2016 -

6:30pm to 8:30pm

King’s College London, Strand Campus, London, WC2R 2LS

Preview Screenings of The Dreamed Ones and Q&As with Director Ruth Beckermann, Oxford and London

21 Nov (4.00-6.30pm), University of Oxford, Taylor Institution Main Hall

22 Nov (6.30-8.30pm), King’s College London, Strand Campus (room TBC)

The Dreamed Ones (Die Geträumten, Ruth Beckermann 2016: 89') centres on two actors, their emotions and conversations while recording the dramatic correspondence of the poets Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. Following the preview screening, renowned Austrian filmmaker, Ruth Beckermann, will discuss her award-winning film (Best Austrian Feature Film, Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film; Prix international de la Scam, Cinéma du Réel; Best Film of the International Competition, Bildrausch Filmfest Basel).

The discussion in Oxford, chaired by Professor Karen Leeder, will be held in German, the discussion at King’s College London, chaired by Dr Áine McMurtry, will be in English.

Places in Oxford are on a first come, first served basis (no booking required).

Eventbrite booking information for the screening at King's College London is available here.

The events are free to attend, and are generously supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum, King's College London, New College Oxford, the German Screen Studies Network, the Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research, the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature and Culture, and Contemporary Films.

Further information about the events can be found here: http://germanscreenstudies.eu/events/

Contact for Oxford: Dr Tobias Heinrich (tobias.heinrich@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk)

Contact for London: Dr Eleanor Halsall (GSSN coordinator, eleanor.halsall@kcl.ac.uk)/ Dr Katya Krylova (katya.krylova@cantab.net)

Knowledge Exchange

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Eleanor Halsall

Contact email: 

eleanor.halsall@kcl.ac.uk

Audience: 

Open to all

Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - 5:30pm

New College, Holywell St, Oxford, OX1 3BN

Lecture Room 6

Mediating Modern Poetry is pleased to host the launch of Ulrike Draesner's new version of the Nibelungenlied: Nibelungen. Heimsuchung  (Reclam 2016).

Ulrike Draesner will discuss her inspirations for the new work, the extraordinary illustrations by Karl Otto Czeschka (this is Reclam as you've never seen it before!) and read from the work. She will then be joined by Professor Almut Suerbaum (Somerville) to discuss the use of the medieval materials and the importance of the Middle High German epic. 

https://www.reclam.de/special/draesner_nibelungen

Wine and snacks will be served. Open to non-German speakers

Please RSVP to karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk for catering.

Mediaiting Modern Poetry: mmp.mml.ox.ac.uk

Friday, May 13, 2016 -

5:00pm to 6:30pm

The Taylor Institute

Room 2

Ulrike Draesner and Ulrike Almut Sandig will read from new and recent work.
There will be a wine reception with readings in German. All welcome!
This will be followed by the next day (Saturday 14th May) Ulrike Almut Sandig and Karen Leeder will be part of the line up for MPT's study day at Queen's College, Oxford to mark its fiftieth anniversary.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Karen Leeder

Contact email: 

karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Audience: 

Open to all

Thursday, November 12, 2015 - 8:00pm

Kings Place, 90 York Way, London

Hall One

Poet in the City, in collaboration with Aurora Orchestra, present a unique evening of poetry, music and art, in celebration of the life and work of Paul Celan. Widely recognised as one of the most important European poets after 1945, Celan’s work touches powerfully on the personal and collective human experience of trauma and loss. He remains an important inspiration for artists across disciplines. Members of Aurora present music illuminating both the artistic background to and wider impact of Celan's writing, including Psalm, a new work by Martin Suckling. Presenting live music including Webern, Berg and Birtwistle, art, poetry and discussion, we explore a fascinating range of perspectives on one of the world’s great poetic voices, the ‘pure poet of the intoxicating line’.

Booking free - register here.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Karen Leeder

Contact email: 

karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Website: 

Details at Poet in the City

Audience: 

Open to all

Thursday, November 5, 2015 - 5:30pm

St Hilda’s College, Oxford, Cowley Pl, Oxford OX4 1DY

Jacqueline du Pré Music Building

The two-part performance Poetic Battlefields brings together historical and contemporary perspectives on the poetry of the First World War.

In Catastrophe/Forms four speakers enact over 30 poems (1911-1919) from 14 different countries, depicting the turn from preliminary war fever to the shock at the effects of industrialised mass war. The multimedia performance is directed by Johann Reißer and spoken by Iwona Mickiewicz, Carolin Bohn, Julia Trompeter, and Xaver Römer.

The duo-performance Kling Sichten, arranged and realised by Trompeter and Römer, illuminates poems by the German poet Thomas Kling (1957-2005) that concern the aftermath and the remembrance of WWI.
Mixed-language performance (with translations). Entrance free. Booking essential at www.eventbrite.com

Register for your free ticket at
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetic-battlefields-the-first-world-war-in-p...

Click here to view the event poster.

Supported by the Goethe-Institut London; the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford; St Hilda’s College, Oxford; New College, Oxford; the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Karen Leeder

Contact email: 

karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Audience: 

Open to all

7:00pm to 8:30pm

Goethe Institut, 50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, SW7 2PH

Bibliothek

The Goethe Institut are hosting a poetry reading with Michael Krüger. Michael Krüger, one of the most prestigious German-language authors and President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, reads from his book of poetry Last Day of the Year and discusses his work with his translator, Karen Leeder. 

Free but booking essential.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Karen Leeder

Contact email: 

karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Audience: 

Open to all

Monday, May 18, 2015 - 6:00pm

Holywell Music Room, Holywell Street, OX1 3BN

Twenty-five years since the fall of the Berlin Wall the poet Volker Braun will give a special reading of old and new work and answer questions with David Constantine and Karen Leeder. He will introduce Rubble Flora: Selected Poems (2014), the first collection of his poetry in English and covering poems over 50 years. Introduced by Ian Wallace.
 

What I never owned, they’ve taken even this. 
What I never lived, I know I’ll always miss.
It was hope that came before this fall,
My property, you flog from stall to stall.
When will I say mine again and mean of all.
From ‘Property’ (1990)

Everyone welcome; contact Karen.Leeder@new.ox.ac.uk.

Photograph © Peter Peitsch

Mediating Modern Poetry

Audience: 

Open to all

Media: 

Rubble Flora

Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - 7:00pm

Keats House, 10 Keats Grove, Hampstead, London NW3 2RR

Poet in the City presents the second event in the Contemporary German Voices series, bringing together two leading poets from Germany and the UK.

Don Paterson and Durs Grünbein draw on a common understanding of poetry: its classical forms and traditions, its larger ambitions. Here, they are joined by translator Karen Leeder, in a meeting of minds across the English/German linguistic divide - a unique opportunity to experience live poetry in conversation.

This event is free to attend, but places should be booked in advance via: perspectivesonpoetry2.eventbrite.co.uk

Durs Grünbein is an award winning German poet. He has published numerous collections of poetry and essays in German, and has translated a variety of authors, including John Ashbery, Samuel Beckett, Henri Michaux, and classic texts from Aeschylus. His poems have been translated into English by Michael Hofmann and published in Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems (2005).

A poet who is frequently described as the best to emerge in Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall, ‘Durs Grünbein's poems read as if the forces of history pressing in on the present drove them into this world.’ New York Times

Don Paterson is an award winning UK poet. His is author of several award winning poetry collections including Rain (Faber) which won the Forward Prize 2009. He has been awarded T S Eliot Prize on two occasions. He received the OBE in 2008 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010.

‘Dynamic, interrogative and unsettling; crafted yet open-ended; fiercely smart, savage and stirring – from the get-go, Don Paterson's poetry has been essential reading.’ The Guardian

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Karen Leeder

Contact email: 

karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Audience: 

Open to all

Sunday, February 22, 2015 - 7:30pm

Richmix, 35 - 47 Bethnal Green Road London, E1 6LA

Featuring acclaimed German poet Ulrike Sandig, this is poetry experienced through the senses. Sandig’s poems have inspired stunning artistic responses in both film and sound art, creating a new perspective on language and its possibilities. Here, she is joined in conversation by the artist Sebastian Reuter and her UK translator Karen Leeder.

Expect live poetry, film projections and the premiere of brand new sound art, created by Ulrike Sandig and Sebastian Reuter especially for this event. Thereafter Sandig will appear in venues across the UK: Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Lancaster and Oxford. Organised by Mediating Modern Poetry and Poet in the City. To see more about the event and books tickets click here.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Contact name: 

Karen Leeder

Contact email: 

karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Audience: 

Open to all

Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - 5:00pm

Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford

Seminar Room

Volker Braun will read and answer questions with David Constantine and Karen Leeder.

This will be followed by 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.

Everyone welcome; seating is, however, limited and available on a first come first served basis. Contact Karen.Leeder@new.ox.ac.uk

Supported by New College, Oxford, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and TORCH

Mediating Modern Poetry

Audience: 

Open to all

Friday, October 3, 2014 (All day)

Cheltenham Literary Festival

Two experienced translators go head to head to mark the fifth Harvill Secker Young Translators Prize as part of the Cheltenham Literary festival 2014: judges Shaun Whiteside, Sally-Ann Spenser and Karen Leeder discuss the minutiae of translating young German author Julia Franck to an audience of 70 keen festival goers.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Audience: 

Open to all

Sunday, July 20, 2014 - 2:00pm

The Southbank Centre, London

Sujata Bhatt, Durs Grünbein, Patrick McGuinness and Don Paterson in conversation with Karen Leeder. FREE EVENT

Mediating Modern Poetry

Website: 

Poetry International 2014

Audience: 

Open to all

Friday, February 28, 2014 (All day)

A Translation Masterclass with German poet Jan Wagner.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Audience: 

Open to all

Professor Karen Leeder (Professor of Modern German Literature and Fellow and Tutor in German at New College, Oxford) has worked with individual poets, translators, musicians and artists to explore modern German poetry. She has reached out to new public audiences – across the country and further afield – through festivals, workshops, masterclasses, readings schools visits and even poetry duels.

You can watch a short film on her work here. 

Public Engagement with Research

Humanities & Identities

Creative Multilingualism

Mediating Modern Poetry

Professor Karen Leeder has won at the Translation Pitch: New Literary Voices with PEN Presents... at ELN 2016

Her pitch promoting translations of poetry by Ulrike Almut Sandig won the ‘PEN Presents’ translation pitch prizeas part of #ELNF2016. Sandig's Thick of It (Dickicht) was honoured by judges Max Porter, Meike Ziervogel and Stefan Tobler at this years's ceremony.

Six translators went head-to-head, pitching their ‘must-acquire’ European books to a live audience and a jury of top publishing experts: Porter (Granta/Portobello), Ziervogel (Peirene Press) and Tobler (And Other Stories). This whirlwind tour of contemporary European writing uncovered brilliant books from Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Turkey and France which have not yet been translated into English.

Translators: Antoinette Fawcett, Emma Mandley, James Womack, Sam Nagele, Paula Darwish and Karen Leeder.

Actors: Lois Tucker and Max Berendt, Liars League.

English PEN’s ‘PEN Presents’ initiative seeks to help UK publishers to discover – and publish – the most exciting books from around the world, and to support literary translators in their development as advocates for international literature.

Read more and see some photos of the event.

Listen to the event podcast:

Mediating Modern Poetry

In the Shadow of Kafka, a series of documentaries and drama on BBC Radio 3 from Sunday 10 May–Saturday 16 May, will examine one of the most elusive and intriguing figures in 20th century literature, Franz Kafka. TORCH Knowledge Exchange Fellow Karen Leeder will participate in the series with her interpretation of the great writer. Listen out on Wednesday 13 May, 10.45-11pm.

Throughout the week, The Essay (Monday 11 May – Friday 15 May, 10.45-11pm) presents five writers’ interpretations of Kafka – comedian, messenger, body phobic and unique writer of imagination -  examining the breadth of Kafka’s thinking, his world and how his writing still resonates for them as contemporary writers. Multi award-winning novelist, poet, essayist and environmental campaigner Margaret Atwood (Monday 11 May, 10.45-11pm) revisits an essay she wrote on Kafka when she was nineteen years old and discusses three trips she has made to Prague in her lifetime and the three different versions of him she found there. Playwright, film maker and novelist Hanif Kureishi (Tuesday 12 May, 10.45-11pm) explores Kafka’s personal and artistic fascination with the body and food, examining how Kafka, a lifelong vegetarian, created characters whose bodies are used as weapons to attack others and ultimately destroy themselves.  Karen Leeder (Wednesday 13 May, 10.45-11pm), a prize-winning translator and Professor of Modern German Literature at New College, Oxford, explores Kafka’s modern use of messengers and messages and the significance and interpretation of communication in his work. Discussing how the process is often the point of the story in Kafka’s works, Leeder argues that it is not so much the meaning as the very act of purveying a message itself that is Kafka’s aim.  Award-winning playwright for stage, radio, opera and film, April de Angelis (Thursday 14 May, 10.45-11pm), dissects the dark comedy ofThe Castle, arguing the case for Kafka as both humourist and feminist. Unpicking the comic tropes of the novel, de Angelis argues a case for Kafka the feminist, as she charts his skilful dismantling – at times comic, at times menacing - of the conventional power structures in the novel. In the final Essay of the series, playwright for radio, stage and screen, Jeff Young (Friday 15 May, 10.45-11pm), considers the unusually powerful impact of Kafka’s language. Jeff, who first encountered The Metamorphosis as a teenager in the 1970s, has collected and compared every new edition of the work. His essay looks at the nature of translation, how it sits between the writer and the words and how the space between the two allows the reader to discover his or her own version of the author and his intention.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Knowledge Exchange Fellow Karen Leeder reads and discusses her translation of the poem by Durs Grünbein, as part of a series of events on poetry and translation at the Southbank Centre.

She explores the poem's relationship to Rilke, the classical past and the challenges of translating German poetry into English.

Please follow this link to listen to the 9 minute podcast on the Modern Poetry in Translation website: http://www.mptmagazine.com/poem/torso-of-polyphemus-694/

Image: http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/53/61/6f/53616f51cb70c7604f3abe03...

Mediating Modern Poetry

KE Fellow Professor Karen Leeder invited by the Goethe Institute, DAAD(German Academic Exchange Service) and Sapienza University (Rome) to participate in a trilingual sympsium and translation workshop entitled, ‘Durs Grünbein in traduzione. Due casi di studio: inglese e italiano’  in Rome. There was a gala reading about the possibilities of poetry and translation with the German poet Durs Grünbein and Italian poet Anna Maria Carpi.

Professor Leeder had the opportunity to work with the poet on some of the poems for the forthcoming Poetry International events in July as part of her Knowledge Exchange Fellowship project.

Mediating Modern Poetry

Knowledge Exchange Fellow, Professor Karen Leeder was chosen for the Vice Versa Translation Project in Berlin. She was awarded a residency at the prestigious Literarisches Colloquium, Berlin (LCB) to work with poet Ulrike Almut Sandig. Suppported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the LCB hosts German and English language translators who work together intensively with chosen writers for a week. Professor Leeder will welcome Ms Sandig and other European poets to the Southbank Centre this Summer and Oxford this Autumn for a poetry reading evening and other events associated with her Knowledge Exchange project: Mediating Modern Poetry

Photo: Poet Ulrike Almut Sandig and Professor Karen Leeder.

Two Poems by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated by Karen Leeder, in Modern Poetry in Translation.

Mediating Modern Poetry