St Hilda’s College, Oxford is host to two readings by contemporary
German authors this September.
On Friday 9 September at 8.30pm in the Lady Brodie Room at St Hilda’s
College, poet Barbara Köhler will be reading from Niemands Frau, her
2007 cycle of poems responding to Homer’s Odyssey.
In Niemands Frau (2007), the poet Barbara Köhler returns to the Odyssey,
the 3000-year-old tale of a hero’s return, not to retell it, but to
follow some of the threads it has woven into the cultural tradition of
the West – and to unravel them, just as Penelope, the wife of the hero
who called himself Nobody, set to work each night to unravel the web she
wove and re-wove by day. Köhler’s return to the Odyssey takes place
under the sign of a grammatical shift, from ‘er’ to ‘sie’, from the
singular hero to a plurality of female voices – Nausikaa, Persephone,
Circe, Calypso, Ino Leukothea, Helena, and Penelope herself – with
implications for thinking about the human subject, about gender and
relationality, but also about the corporeality and multivocality which
underlies the ‘virtual reality’ of the written or printed text. With its
rhythmic musicality and its polyvalent meanings, Köhler’s poem-cycle
revalorises the siren song of poetic speech in the face of an age given
to instrumental Feststellung.
All are welcome. Entrance is free, but registration is essential:
email [log in to unmask]
This is part of a two-day interdisciplinary symposium on Köhler’s work.
On Thursday 15 September, as part of an international conference
entitled Ten Years On - 9/11 in European literature, acclaimed author
Thomas Lehr will read from his novel September. Fata Morgana (2010)
which interweaves the story of a victim of the World Trade Center
attacks and one of a victim of the war in Iraq. The reading (with
English translation) will take place at 6 pm in the Lady Brodie Room.
The discussion will be chaired by Georgina Paul.
Details of the conference can be found here:
http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/ten-years-on
--
Dr Georgina Paul,
Fellow and Tutor in German & Tutor for Graduates,
St Hilda's College,
Oxford OX4 1DY
Tel: +44 (0)1865 610311
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