In the organizer's words:

How to write - in a time when everything living is under threat?

For the US poet Joyelle McSweeney, poems that simultaneously record song and destruction have an "uncanny, inventive, enchanting and disturbing aesthetic". For in an age of man-made disasters, questions about political and poetic forms of resistance are becoming more pressing: how can the poem translate traces of ruin and loss into language without appropriating them?

"Annihilating all that's made / to a green thought in a green shade" - with this famous line by the poet Andrew Marvell (1621 - 1678), McSweeney links her reflections on a poetry that confronts the crises of the present. Writing not about the end, but out of it - as a poetic practice of survival, lamentation and transformation.
The Poetica authors are invited to join guest author Joyelle McSweeney and junior professor Judith Rauscher to explore how poetry creates a space that not only bears witness to the deadly consequences of political neglect, but also writes against them - and in which the wounded, silenced and erased continue to have an effect: "a green thought in a green shade". Gentle magic as a resistant, cross-species echo in which vulnerability becomes a creative force.

Moderation: Rike Scheffler and Judith Rauscher
The event will be held in English.
In cooperation with the Junior Professorship for American Literature and Culture, University of Cologne and the conference "Anthropocene Necropoetics: Empire, Violence, and Ecological Ruin in US Poetry" organized by Judith Rauscher (University of Cologne) and Mahshid Mayar (University of Innsbruck), which will take place from 28-30 January 2026 at the University of Cologne.
-
University of Cologne, conference room in the seminar building
-
Free admission.