»Der Kerl, der sich die Welt gekauft hat«

18.05.2019 / 19:00 – 21:00
With Tomasz Różycki

“When I began to write I didn’t know / how quickly it would make me very rich, / how I would buy an island and then fly / there fifteen times a day, how waves would place / old bottles at my feet, and narwhals from / those waves would eat straight from my hand.” From the poetry collection “Colonies,” translated from the Polish by Mira Rosenthal, 1997).

Tomász Różycki combines social criticism, humor and self-irony in his poetry. In Poland, he achieved fame for “Twelve Stations,” an epic poem about the Polish province, for which he received the Kościelski Prize (for the German version translated by Olaf Kühl, 2009).

Różycki was born in Opole, Upper Silesia in 1970, is a translator, a teacher of Romance languages, and, at least for his generation, his country’s most important poet. He has produced seven volumes of poetry to date. Most recently, his collection of poems “Litery” (“Alphabetic Letters ”) was nominated for the Wisława Szymborska Prize. For “Colonies,” the English translation of his sonnet cycle “Kolonie”, he received the 2014 Northern California Book Award.

At the conclusion of his residency in Berlin, Różycki will read from his book of poems “Der Kerl, der sich die Welt gekauft hat,” published by Fototapeta in 2018, as well as excerpts from essays and new poems specially translated for the evening. Literary translator Dorota Stroińska will moderate the talk with his translator Bernhard Hartmann.

The reading is part of the »21. Lange Buchnacht in der Oranienstraße.”

Literary translator Dorota Stroińska will moderate the talk with his translator Bernhard Hartmann.

Talk in Polish, German, and English

free Admission

Photo: Slav Zatoka