Book premiere: Trapezherz by Volha Hapeyeva

09.02.2023 / 19:00 – 21:00
With Volha Hapeyeva

Moderated by Ronya Othmann

Poet and essayist Volha Hapeyeva is unquestionably one of the most important voices of contemporary Belarusian literature. Since leaving Minsk several years ago, she has lived in various places, but has remained committed to one thing: poetry. It is no coincidence that the highly acclaimed essay for which she won the WORTMELDUNGEN Ulrike Crespo Literaturpreis in 2022 is titled Die Verteidigung der Poesie in Zeiten dauernden Exils (A Defense of Poetry in Times of Perpetual Exile). In this essay, Hapeyeva writes about nomadic thinking and about trying on “different life costumes.” She also repeatedly emphasizes that language is “never neutral, never objective,” and is in fact “always political.”

Trapezherz, her second collection of poems to be translated into German after In My Garden of Mutants, will be published in February 2023. Volha Hapeyeva’s poems are invariably existential and subversive, precise and brimming with physical metaphors. They traverse languages and countries, eras and planets. Her new volume of poetry blends melancholy and love, playfulness and irony, visual snapshots and philosophical musings, physicality and sensory impressions, as well as insights on homeland and nomadism. Volha Hapeyeva will present her new volume in a discussion with author Ronya Othmann.

Discussion and reading will be held in German.

Free admission

daad gallery