In the organizer's words:

"Poetry is enlightenment," writes poet and activist Audre Lorde, "because in the poem we name what was nameless and without form before the poem, already sensed but not yet born." Poetry is therefore not merely an echo of the world, but its harbinger, the basis for a different future: it anticipates what is to come, brings forth something new through words - and thus becomes magic that creates knowledge and makes the invisible tangible.

At the same time, poetry is also aware of the dangers of "bringing into the light" and naming: words can hurt, exclude, fix power and orders. This is precisely where poetry comes in, helping us to liberate language from the old, binary coordinates that were solidified with the Enlightenment - light(Enlightenment) and dark, nature and culture, animate and inanimate. So how can we name the world without narrowing it down? Who has the power of interpretation - and how do presents and futures sound whose ways of speaking are more sensitive, more permeable, more polyphonic?

The Poetica authors invite you to explore this field of tension together. Based on the ancient Greek poiein - "to make, to create" - they will explore poetry as a creative act that conjures up solidarity and transformation.

They will bring their own "magical objects" - poems, songs, spells, stories - and open up encounters with the world-shaping application of poetry.

Moderation: Rike Scheffler

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University of Cologne, conference room in the seminar building

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The event will be held in English.
Free admission.