Seda Tunç reads at the World Poetry Day 2025

The UNESCO World Poetry Day honors the significance of poetry, the diversity of linguistic cultural heritage, and the importance of oral traditions. Since its initiation in 2000, the Haus für Poesie, in collaboration with its partner institutions—the Akademie Schloss Solitude, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, the Schloss Wiepersdorf Cultural Foundation, the Czech Literary Centre, and the International Artist House Villa Concordia Bamberg—has organized the central event in Germany.

This year, we celebrate UNESCO World Poetry Day with readings by six international poets.

AVRINA (born 1992 in Tamil Nadu), this year’s fellow at the Schloss Wiepersdorf Cultural Foundation, writes poetry and prose, and has received several awards, including the Short Fiction / University of Essex International Short Story Prize in 2021.

Petr Borkovec (born 1970 in the Czech Republic) and Georg Leß (born 1981 in Arnsberg) are the winners of the 2024 German-Czech Dresden Poetry Prize. Georg Leß has published four poetry collections, most recently Die Nacht der Hungerputten (kookbooks 2023) and Lindwurmsichtungen und Berichtigungen (Corvinus Presse 2024). Petr Borkovec, poet and translator (mainly of 20th-century Russian poetry), has been widely translated into German. His latest publication is a volume of prose miniatures, Den Stock aufheben (Edition Korrespondenzen 2024, translated by Lena Dorn).

Rachel McNicholl, translator and poet from the west coast of Ireland, was a fellow at the International Artist House Villa Concordia in Bamberg. During her fellowship, new poems were created, now for the first time translated into German by Eva Bourke and Hans-Christian Oeser.

María Negroni (born 1951 in Argentina), fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, is an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist. Her works include the poetry collections Arte y Fuga (Pre-Textos 2004, German: Kunst und Fuge) and Interludio en Berlín (Pre-Textos 2014, German: Interludium in Berlin).

Seda Tunç (born 1983 in Izmit, Turkey), currently a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, lives as a poet and translator in Vienna. Her debut collection WELCH (edition mosaik) was published in 2021. She is currently working on her next poetry collection, which addresses national border politics, structural violence, and displacement.

Readings in the original language with German translations for reading along. Under the patronage of the German UNESCO Commission.

The greeting address will be given by Roman Luckscheiter, Secretary General of the German UNESCO Commission.
Moderation: Marie Kaiser.