Saturday, July 13, 2024 was far more than the ‘long night of poetry’ [Lange Nacht der Poesie] billed by festival organizers. It was an entire day and night of poetry, stretching from one morning through to the predawn hours of the next. The day began and ended with Versopolis, bracketing a survey of contemporary poetry ranging from China to the Caribbean, Lithuania to Romania, Nigeria, Switzerland, and virtually everywhere in-between. Admittedly, such polyphony has long been the rule for LeseLenz. Each year, poets arrive in the quaint village of Hausach im Schwarzwald from across Europe and the wider world, drawn by the insatiable charm and poetic charisma of festival founder José F. A. Oliver, as well as the festival’s ongoing reputation as an intimate meeting place for the world’s literary greats: a multiday, multivocal conversation where poems are read to the rhythm of babbling brooks and prose wafts in a breeze tinged with the tang of Black Forest Fire. A place where one may arrive year after year, without ever truly feeling one has left.
Aušra Kaziliūnaitė at LeseLenz
This year’s Versopolis guests were emblematic of the kind of profound lyrical range that has become a staple of LeseLenz: Lithuanian poet Aušra Kaziliūnaitė and Dutch-Curaçaoan poet Radna Fabias embodying Versopolis’ commitment to increasing the visibility of a many-sided European poetry. Because where else can one, in a matter of hours, witness the performative projections of a Baltic poet steeped in the interwoven traditions of philosophy, religion and folklore, and then be lulled and shaken, caressed and rudely awakened by the subtle wisdom from the Dutch-Caribbean, by a poet whose inspirations span oceans and continents? With Versopolis, in Hausach, one gets both. Speakers of German also receive the additional bonus of translations brought to vivacious life by young voice actors from Stuttgart’s acclaimed State University of Music and Performing Arts. And so, we have it all: Europe, at its poetic finest, from the furthest, most westward reaches of the Caribbean to the easternmost marches of the Baltic, and right back to its green beating, heart in the rippling valleys of the Black Forest.
Aušra Kaziliūnaitė began the day in Hausach’s Mediathek with a reading marked by the plurality of the author’s own lyrical I – whose many faces and voices helped lay the groundwork for the day to come: ‘a person / is a river / on which ducks / swim with empty / plastic bottles // and the one and / the other are equally / beautiful.’ It is not always an easy feat to be among the first readers of the morning on a day as filled with literature as this Saturday. And yet, as always, the room was packed. Because LeseLenz attendees have come to expect something truly special from Hausach’s international guests. Kaziliūnaitė did not disappoint. And so it was that a full twelve hours later, the final panel of poets beginning at ten in the evening, read to an even larger audience in Hausach’s city hall. There, Radna Fabias’ poise and power left audience members still reciting her words to me at breakfast the next day: ‘a man is not a hobby // a man is not a punishment not a line i have to write a hundred times / a man is not a throne to sit on legs crossed like a lady / i am not a lady / i am a woman.’ The reverberations from her poetic mic drop ring out loud.
Radna Fabias at LeseLenz
In the anonymity of a metropolis, the potential for lyric encounters can remain an untapped possibility – simmering somewhere below the surface of the hustle and bustle of so many competing lives – but within a small community forged by decades of literary interventions, the strength of such encounters pulse with an energy to move mountains, hearts, and minds. And this is and remains what makes LeseLenz so special. Because for those who wager the journey deep into the steep vales of the Black Forest, it is impossible to stay, or come away unchanged.
Originally from Northern California, Jon Cho-Polizzi is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He received his PhD in German and Medieval Studies from UC Berkeley after studying Literature, History, and Translation in Santa Cruz and Heidelberg. Jon's literary translations focus on the polyphony of contemporary German-language literature, and his recent book-length publications include translations of Fatma Aydemir's Dschinns (Djinns), Sharon Dodua Otoo's Adas Raum (Ada's Realm / Ada's Room), and Max Czollek's Desintegriert Euch! (De-Integrate: A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century). His poetry translations have been featured in numerous anthologies, exhibitions, and journals.
