Premiere at Museum Lüneburg: Poetry reading with renowned female writers
2024-03-14 For the first time, the internationally renowned poets and scientists Yvette Christiansë and Rosalind C. Morris presented selected texts from their works in a unique poetry reading entitled "Antipodes". The event was accompanied by a discussion and moderation by the Ukrainian writer Katja Petrowskaja, currently a Public Fellow at LIAS.
Anyone wondering what a poetry reading has to do with basic research at LIAS should wish they had been there. Because Rosalind C. Morris, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, LIAS Senior Fellow and poet, said on a remarkable evening at the Museum Lüneburg: “Poetry is the refusal of the idea that there is any end point to listening, the refusal of the idea that there is a single answer. You could say that poetry is potentially anti-totalitarian.” And with that, she formulated the programme of the Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) from a poetic perspective: the pluralisation of possibilities and potentialisation as a research attitude.
This special meeting marked a premiere for both writers, who presented their poems in an innovative format. They took it in turns to read selected works, while the texts were simultaneously projected onto the wall for the audience to see, making it easier for non-native speakers to understand them. “We traveled from small worlds to big ones and have been to numerous places,” said Katja Petrowskaja, summarising the reading. The lyrical themes ranged from war and loss to love and colonialism, from biblical metaphors to historical sources and events. Biblical references and the cultural influences on English literature were thematised.
Last but not least, Canadian American (Morris), South African (Christiansë) and Russian-Ukrainian (Petrovskaya) biographies came together here, raising the question of the power of words in totalitarian systems and under the current post-democratic currents. In their response, the authors formulated that the role of poetry should be seen as a radical form of expression and freedom. Rosalind C. Morris reminded us that we live in a time when even the freedom of prose, in which fictional characters are allowed to say anything, is coming under pressure. The poet and professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Yvette Christiansë, who read from her works “Castaway” and “Imprendahora”, contributed her experiences: “Language can be like a slap in the face. Through the racist language of insult, people absorb shame, if nothing else.”