HAUS FÜR POESIE

This year’s festival motifs of Poesiefestival Berlin follow a poetic logic of layering: ancient figures appear alongside pop-cultural symbols, mythical bodies are reflected in contemporary forms, meanings shift, multiply, contradict one another. A visual field emerges in which different times, systems of knowledge, and aesthetic registers are present simultaneously.

At the center of this year’s program are three major themes that unfold throughout the festival and to which three evenings are explicitly dedicated: Myth, Grief, and a critical Re-writing of a predominantly white and male European literary “Canon”.

All three themes productively disrupt systems of representation, make power relations visible, and continually find new forms of poetic speech via discourse and dissent. They run through the entire program of Poesiefestival Berlin 2026, which takes place from May 15 to June 14.

From May 15 to 31, a decentralized festival program throughout the city features a wide variety of formats, including film screenings, book premieres, poetic interventions in exhibitions, and poetic walks. Events will be held at twelve venues, including daadgalerie, PalaisPopulaire, Museum für Naturkunde, Silent Rixdorf, and Kotti-Shop.

A special highlight will take place on Sunday, May 24: a world star of poetry, Canadian poet Anne Carson, will read live in Berlin for the first time in nearly 20 years, at Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg. Her work is closely connected to this year’s festival themes, as myth, grief, and engagement with canonical traditions frequently intersect in her writing. Regarding her most recent book Wrong Norma, she writes:

“Wrong Norma is a collection of writings about different things, like Joseph Conrad, Guantanamo, Flaubert, snow, poverty, Roget's Thesaurus, my Dad, Saturday night, Sokrates, writing sonnets, forensics, encounters with lovers, the word ‘idea’, the feet of Jesus, and Russian thugs. The pieces are not linked. That's why I've called them ‘wrong’.”

Starting June 2, the festival will concentrate at silent green in Berlin-Wedding, where, in addition to major thematic evenings, numerous other readings and talks will take place, as well as Weltklang – Night of Poetry featuring seven international poets and the Berlin Poetry Lecture, which this year will be held by Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort. The festival will also offer free readings by more than 50 poets on the lawn of silent green on two weekends (June 6/7 and June 13).

During the thematic festival evenings, first, four poets will devote themselves to myths as living narrative forms at Writing Myth (Tue, June 9). The oldest myths in particular, passed down orally over centuries, have always been shaped by transformation and variation. In the poetry presented here, mythical figures appear in new contexts; stories are continued, shifted, or newly interrogated where contemporary continuations have so far been missing.

Re-Writing a Canon (Wed, June 10) places parts of a European, predominantly white and male, so-called literary “canon” itself at the center of attention. Deliberately subversive rewritings, shifts, and appropriations demonstrate that this supposed canon is by no means a closed entity, but rather a historically evolved construct whose significance today can only arise from constant critical questioning.

At Writing Grief (Thu, June 11), poets explore how loss inscribes itself into language and the body, and what poetic speech can accomplish when grief dissolves familiar orders. How can one (continue to) write when what was once taken for granted becomes fragile? Which new linguistic spaces open up precisely from this sort of rupture?

The early-bird presale with a limited ticket contingent for selected events has already begun, while the regular presale for the entire festival will start in April 2026.