Lavochkina / rosé / Golimowska

In English, Polish and German / March 5th / 7:30 pm / Entry: 5 euros

Rebuilding the Babylon Tower.
All the brilliant imperfections – languages we write in.
Writing at the crossroads of languages, three authors present their work.
Translanguaging and multilinguality in artistic practice, how we balance
between excellence and flaw. Migration. Decolonisation. Personal stories.

Reading and discussion by Svetlana Lavochkina, ariel rosé and Karolina Golimowska.

Svetlana Lavochkina is a Ukrainian-born novelist, poet and translator. She has lived in Leipzig, Germany, since 1999. The language of her literary work is English. She became known in Germany with the translation of her debut novel entitled „Zap“ (Puschkins Erben, Voland & Quist 2019). Her work has been widely published in the US, Europe and Australia and translated into eight languages. Her novella, “Dam Duchess”, was a prize winner in the Paris Literary Prize. Since the onset of the Russian full-scale war, Lavochkina has been raising awareness of Ukraine in germanophone mass media as well as collaborating on interdisciplinary projects, among which, Shigeru Ban’s Paper Sanctuaries: Pragmatism & Poetry for Ukrainian Refugees for London Design Biennale 2023.

ariel rosé is a Polish-Norwegian poet, essayist, illustrator, translator. He is the author and illustrator of the poetry books »morze nocą jest mięśniem serca« (»the sea by night is a muscle of the heart«, PIW, 2022) and »Północ. Przypowieści« (»North: Parables«, Znak, 2019), nominated to the Polish-German Josepha Award. He presented his poetry at Weltklag, poesifestival berlin, Coming Out, Inviting In queer festival at LCB, and das internationale literaturfestival berlin (ilb) and parataxe event in Berlin, 2024.
In Oslo, ariel co-runs a literary venue where twice a year they invite poets from underrepresented countries. In autumn 2024, ariel was a fellow in Lviv, Ukraine, at INDEX and IWM (Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna) completing his book on Ukrainian poets and language.

Karolina Golimowska, born in Aachen, grew up in Warsaw, lives in Berlin and is a literary scholar, translator and author of short prose and journalistic pieces. She has published in Sinn und Form, Gazeta Wyborcza, the German-Polish magazine Dialog, Chimera, Wyspa and academic journals, among others. Golimowska holds a PhD in American Studies and teaches at Freie Universität in Berlin. In 2014, she
was awarded the German-Polish Journalist Award Tadeusz Mazowiecki. In the years 2018-2021 she has led the poetry translation workshop VERSschmuggel as part of the poetry festival poesiefestival berlin. Since fall 2024 head of literature and debates at the Polish Institute Berlin.