In Munich, the poet Jan Wagner first introduced his young colleague Ronya Othmann to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, followed by his Italian colleague Federico Italiano in the Poetry Cabinet.
He is “a border crosser, a converter between the worlds”. This is what it says in the epilogue to a new volume of poetry by the Italian poet Federico Italiano, who lives in Vienna. Colleague writers Jan Wagner and Raoul Schrott translated his volume “Siebenarten von Weiß” and they can all be heard together on December 14 in the Lyrik Kabinett. Wagner will travel to Munich days beforehand: on December 12, the poet will introduce his young colleague Ronya Othmann to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, who will receive the Horst Bienek Promotional Prize there a day later (the main prize goes to Judith Herzberg ). Othmann, born in Munich in 1993, can also be described as a wanderer between the worlds. In her debut novel “Die Sommer” from 2020, she tells the story of a schoolgirl who spends her holidays in her grandparents’ Syrian-Kurdish village. The volume of poetry she published afterwards, “the crimes”, is also haunting, in which she recalls a world that has vanished, of violence and flight, of landscapes and the people in it.
Ronya Othmann, Mon., Dec. 12/ Tue., Dec. 13, each 7 p.m., Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Max-Joseph-Platz 3, badsk.de; Federico Italiano, Wed., Dec. 14, 7 p.m., Poetry Cabinet, Amalienstr. 83, lyrik-kabinett.de