HAUS FÜR POESIE

Beyond that, You paraphrases Freud in suggesting that the origin of the first festival was the murder of a father by his two sons so that they could have sex with their sisters: “We learn that they determined / to translate their blood-lust into / festivals and rituals, which in turn / became art, culture, civilization.” Not exactly promising conditions. And, You asks: where, in all this, was the mother? Investigating the deeply rooted structures of discrimination in globalized culture and history – especially against women and migrants – is central to You’s poetry and turns the festival into a kind of shifting image.

In “The Sequined Principle,” You describes how, at the time of her “burgher exam” in the Netherlands, the then prime minister and current NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte proclaimed that migrants should adapt to Dutch norms or leave the country (“doe normal of ga weg”). You’s response is a resistance to normality when it is defined according to discriminatory and neoliberal standards: “What’s normal is to wear sequins / and to make everything into a festival!” In her poems, You moves seamlessly between codes and languages, blending pop-cultural references with quotations from Wittgenstein, Anne Carson, or Bernadette Mayer; she writes about the idea for a film in which all David Kims come together, and a “Sonnet Of Tasks That Feel Far More Pressing Right Now Than Writing This Poem Because It Would Be Upsetting If I Didn’t Do Them But Most Likely No One Will Ever Remember I Did.”

All the poems presented at the event have been especially translated for Poesiefestival Berlin.

Mia You in conversation with Lea Schneider

The event takes place in English.