Poet in the Archives: 18 April 2019 – wine reception from 18:15; event 19:15-20:30
An evening at the British Library in celebration of the life, work and legacy of poet-translator Michael Hamburger, with writers Iain Galbraith, Karen Leeder and Jen Calleja.

 

Michael Hamburger, whose archive came to the British Library after his death in 2007, translated many of the great German and Austrian writers – among them, Friedrich Hölderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Celan, Georg Trakl and W. G. Sebald - and is a major poet in his own right. Born in Berlin in 1924 to German Jewish parents, his family fled Nazi Germany for Britain in 1933, and he went on to become a crucial figure in British and German letters. This evening of readings and discussion will celebrate the life, work and legacy of Hamburger, with contemporary poets and translators exploring the variety of ways they’ve engaged with his work, and how he’s inspired their own.

 

Iain Galbraith is a Scottish poet and translator who lives in Germany. His poems have appeared in New Writing Scotland, Poetry Review, Irish Pages, The Times Literary Supplement and PN Review, and his first collection, The True Height of the Ear, was published by Arc in 2018. Iain was acquainted with Michael Hamburger and has edited his essays and poetry in German translation, published in two volumes in 2007 and 2009 by Folio Verlag.

 

Karen Leeder is a writer, translator and academic, and teaches German at New College, Oxford where she works especially on modern poetry. She translates contemporary German literature into English, including works by Volker Braun, Michael Krüger and Raoul Schrott. Karen has written and lectures on Hamburger’s poetry, most recently in the context of lateness.

 

Jen Calleja is a writer and literary translator from German. She has translated literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry by writers including Wim Wenders, Marion Poschmann, Kerstin Hensel, Michelle Steinbeck and Gregor Hens, and her translations have featured in The New Yorker and The White Review. Jen will be reading from and discussing her pamphlet of original poems inspired by the Michael Hamburger archive and written as part of her role as Translator in Residence at the British Library.

 

Tickets from £7.00 – including a glass of wine - available from: https://www.bl.uk/events/poet-in-the-archives-michael-hamburger

 

A collaboration between the British Library, the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre, the Institute of Modern Languages Research and the Open World Research Initiative project Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community.

 

 

Jon Millington

Events and Research Projects Officer

OWRI Project Administrator (Translingual Strand)

 

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