Reparaturen des Lebens

Poetry and talks
with Kim Hyesoon and Maria Stepanova
Moderation: Uljana Wolf

Two of the most important contemporary international poets as guests in Stuttgart:
"Once you have entered Kim Hyesoon's poetic cosmos and listened to it, you will get stuck," writes the enthusiastic poetry connoisseur Marie-Luise Knott about the Korean poet. Inspired by the 2014 ferry disaster, Hyesoon's "Autobiography of Death" contains forty-nine poems, translated by Sool Park and Uljana Wolf; each represents a single day in which the spirit wanders after death before entering the cycle of reincarnation. The poems come together to form a mosaic of pain and meditation, becoming a place of grief, solace - and life. Hyesoon meets the Russian poet Maria Stepanova, who in her Munich speech on poetry refers to Kim Hyesoon, among others, when she reflects on the voice, "whose origin is far older than language". It occupies its own place in the space between poet and thinker, which, according to Hyesoon, is not described - a space where the spirit voice and the reader can meet. Stepanova received the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding in 2023 and reads poems from "Mädchen ohne Kleider", translated by Olga Radetzkaja; a volume with song-like and narrative poetry cycles in which Stepanova asks about the "repair of life".

Supported by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea