HAUS FÜR POESIE

Myths are the fabric of our most ancient dreams, populated by gods, demigods, shape-shifters and ordinary mortals; among them travelers to the underworld and sky-stormers—figures who have migrated into humanity’s collective unconscious, where they still nest and have left indelible traces. They are meaning-making interpretations of reality in which repressed history condenses into ever-changing narrative plots. On this evening, four poets come together who each, in different ways, productively engage with myth in their writing.

The Swedish-Sámi poet Linnea Axelsson (born 1980 in Porjus (Bårjås) in the municipality of Jokkmokk, northern Sweden) became internationally known a few years ago with her long poem Ædnan (Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2018). Last year her most recent collection was published: Sjaunja (Albert Bonniers Förlag 2024; the title refers to a wetland and natural area in northern Sweden). Carried by a calm, meditative tone, it is a more intimate book compared to its predecessor. Axelsson artfully shifts between layers of present, memory, and myth. She writes about lying with foxes and giving birth in two languages, and explores the question of what infinity tastes like. The cast of the new volume includes the three daughters of the Sámi mother goddess Madderakka: Sáráhkká, who assists women during pregnancy and childbirth, Juoksáhkká, who determines the sex of the unborn child, and Uksáhkká, the so-called door goddess, who protects the home and family. At one point Axelsson lets Sáráhkká say: “I was someone you had to reckon with. / You could rely on me like a primal force. [...] Then I became superstition. / Then I became a story, then an image and a memory.”

Ulrike Draesner (born 1962 in Munich) reworks Homer’s Odyssey in penelopes sch( )iff (Penguin Verlag, 2025), focusing primarily on the female figures. A myth brushed against the grain. She herself uses the genre label “post-epic” and explains in a preface: “Above all, I wanted to tell the story of Penelope in that dark space where normally only the end credits roll. In what comes after.” In doing so, Draesner places herself within a proud feminist tradition that includes Margaret Atwood, Anne Carson, Alice Oswald, and Barbara Köhler. She also explicitly references Emily Wilson’s brilliant new translation of the Odyssey, which strips the original down and makes it newly accessible to a contemporary audience. Draesner describes “a world in the wind,” in which a break with classical myth is enacted while a sisterly voyage to sea is undertaken: “penelope navigates / by the constellation / of the northern cow / while our / calves (as tender as / their sweetbreads) flare their nostrils / against the foamy / surf.”

For the British poet and translator Sasha Dugdale (born 1974 in Sussex), myths are a prism through which we see the past and interpret the present. In her latest collection The Strongbox (Carcanet Press, 2024), she places the mythological figures of the Trojan War into an equally violent present. Readers encounter the prophetic Cassandra (“I prophesied to die on the spot – / but got that one wrong”) and repeatedly Helen, abducted by Paris, whose birth—she emerged from an egg laid by Leda after Zeus impregnated her in the form of a swan—is described ironically at one point: “Was she born from an egg / a reptile, the daughter of a whore / a dragon biting the hand that raised her / was she drawn into a barbaric cult / a murderous city kingdom / was it plainly speaking her fault?” Dugdale never uses myth as a “reliable guide”; instead, she writes that it carries its own movement within itself, and that this is both its salvation and its gift to us.

Clara Elena García is a Paraguay-born poet living in the United States. Seven Legendary Monsters (Moonrise/Revolutionaries Press, 2025) is her first book written in English. The seven monsters are cursed sons born after birth from the union of a human woman with an evil spirit. Their names are: Teju Jagua, Mbói Tu'ĩ, Moñái, Jasy Jatere, Kurupi, and Ao Ao. They come from Guaraní mythology, from an era long before colonization. They are morally deeply ambivalent hybrid beings who dwell at the margins of human civilization in forests, caves, and swamps. They look so terrifying as if they had escaped directly from H. R. Giger’s cabinet of horrors. In her approach to the monsters, García refrains from any moral judgment; instead, she lends them her own voice and presents seven radically subjective perspectives on the world. For example, she lets the siesta spirit Jasy Jatere, who lures children into the forest, say: “I do not / mean to / cause them / harm but / solitude / sparks my / curiosity and / my heart leads me astray”.

The poems by Linnea Axelsson, Sasha Dugdale and Clara Elena García were translated into German specifically for Poesiefestival Berlin.

Moderation Ana Rocío Jouli

The event will be interpreted English-German.
Kindly supported by ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen

Funded by: Swedish Arts Council