HAUS FÜR POESIE

In 2025, two volumes by Julia Cimafiejeva were published simultaneously, both in German translation by Tina Wünschmann, in which the poet, in different ways, attempts to weave her own history and identity as an exile out of “auslappen, aus fetzen, aus schiefen erinnerungsflicken.” In the volume Ich zerschneide die Geschichte (edition frölich), Cimafiejeva, as a “papiergärtnerin,” illustrates collages made from found materials with short poems. Here, collage becomes a metaphor for exile, in which the poet, torn from her previous surroundings, finds herself as “abbild und ebenbild der riesenhand, die mich mit stumpfer schere ausschneidet und auf diese seite klebt.” In contrast, in the poetry collection Blutkreislauf (edition.fotoTAPETA), the stories of her family members merge into a “langen Weg fort von zu Hause.” We learn about her great-aunt Šura, who emigrated from England to Canada in 1952 aboard the transatlantic ship Canberra, or about her grandfather Alioś, who performed forced labor in Neustadt an der Donau in the 1940s. And finally about the poet herself, who was evacuated with her family in 1986 after the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, later moved to Minsk, and has been living in exile since 2020—first in Graz, then in Chemnitz, Zug, and Hamburg—seeking to weave herself into her family history.

In her essay collection Wörterbuch einer Nomadin (Literaturverlag Droschl 2026), Volha Hapeyeva describes her “Nomadenjahre” since the autumn of 2020: “Seit fünf Jahren habe ich kein richtiges Zuhause mehr. Jedes Jahr ziehe ich um, und an keinen der Orte, an denen ich gelebt habe, kann ich zurückkehren.” For the poet and PhD linguist, the starting point is always words—their etymology and cultural imprint in different languages, their context-dependent mutability. Each chapter is preceded by words that map the thematic field and reveal surprising connections. Thus, in one essay Hapeyeva examines the “sprachliche Verkleidung der Rüstungsindustrie,” which gives weapons flower names in order to poeticize war, the “Lieblingsspiel des Patriarchats.” Elsewhere, she explores the linguistic colonization of nature, which humans carry out through their systems of naming and description. Hapeyeva also describes the healing power of poetry, which she compares to the magic of snow. Nomadism becomes for her a life-sustaining and poetological constant: the fluid identity of the border-crosser who moves in the in-between, in multilingualism, in adaptability, across time zones and fixed identities—“immer auf dem Weg, immer dazwischen, laminal.”

The event will be interpreted between Belarusian and German.

In reading & conversation Julia Cimafiejeva, Volha Hapeyeva
Moderation Nina Weller