Welcoming speeches will come from Prof. Dr. Gernot Michael Müller, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bonn, and Jan Valk, Head of the Literature Department at the Kunststiftung NRW foundation for the arts. They will be followed by the main speech in Uljana Wolf’s honor, to be given by the literature scholar PD Dr. Thomas Fechner-Smarsly.
About Uljana Wolf
Born in Berlin in 1979, Uljana Wolf is a poet and translator. Her recent works include “muttertask” (kookbooks 2023) and “Etymologischer Gossip” (kookbooks 2021, awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the Non-Fiction/Essay category). Working from a number of Eastern European languages and English into German, she has translated volumes of poetry by, among others, Christian Hawkey, Eugene Ostashevsky, Valzhyna Mort and Don Mee Choi. These include the latter’s “DMZ Colony,” which was published in German as “DMZ Kolonie” by Spector Books in 2023 and has been nominated for several awards including the Internationaler Literaturpreis presented by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). Uljana Wolf’s own works have been translated into more than 12 languages. She has received numerous accolades, including the Peter Huchel Prize (2006), the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (2016), the Kunstpreis Berlin (2019) and the Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie (2019 and 2021).
In Uljana Wolf’s own words: “Does a poem written in a particular language only speak in that language? Even if it’s written in a made-up language? And, if it’s written in several languages, does that mean it speaks in many? Or just in this one—the one of the poem?”
About the Thomas Kling Lectureship in Poetry
Funded by the Kunststiftung NRW and the Department of German and Comparative Literature and Culture at the University of Bonn, the Thomas Kling Lectureship in Poetry is a unique form of support provided for an individual writer and literature in general. It brings literature and academia together by encouraging direct interaction between students and researchers on the one hand and writers on the other. This is because the holder of the position is expected to give lectures as part of the department’s regular curriculum.
Established in 2011, it is named after the poet and essayist Thomas Kling (1957–2005), whose art of language research forms the benchmark for this one-of-a-kind lectureship in poetry.
The position of Thomas Kling Lecturer in Poetry has to date been held by Stefan Weidner, Barbara Köhler (died 2021), Oswald Egger, Norbert Scheuer, Marion Poschmann, Esther Kinsky, Christoph Peters, Anja Utler, Marcel Beyer, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Steffen Popp and Ulrike Draesner.
The Literaturhaus Bonn is organizing a program of events to accompany the lectureship, more details of which can be found at https://literaturhaus-bonn.de/veranstaltung/uljana-wolf-muttertask/.
Further information on the Thomas Kling Lectureship in Poetry an Uljana Wolf is available at https://www.iglk.uni-bonn.de/de/institut/veranstaltungsreihen/thomas-kling-poetikdozentur.
Media contact:
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Stüssel
Department of German and Comparative Literature and Culture at the University of Bonn
Phone: +49 228 73-7563
Email: stuessel@uni-bonn.de