The Limits of Language

These constraints determine who is even allowed to speak, whose words are heard, and what can be said without risk. Conversely, experiences such as war, exile, love and loss often cannot be conveyed through language alone. Memories appear fragmented, certain feelings defy explanation, and sometimes silence offers a glimpse of what words cannot express. Poetry has always operated within this tension. Rather than overcoming the limits of language, it makes them visible, challenges established grammatical rules and leaves room for ambiguity.

Ghayath Almadhoun, Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo and Yang Lian write from different linguistic, historical and poetic traditions. Almadhoun transforms stories of Palestinian-Syrian exile into poems about memories and ruptures; Aukongo lends a powerful and intimate voice to the experiences and intersectional realities of Namibian-German people; Yang Lian, a key figure among the Chinese ‘Mist Poets’, has developed a formally daring poetics over decades of exile.

In the works of these three authors, questions of uprooting, violence, memory, survival and belonging take on different forms. Their poems explore what happens when the language handed down through the generations can no longer capture lived experience.

In their readings, followed by a discussion moderated by literary scholar and critic Maha El Hissy, the poets demonstrate not only what words can express, but also what becomes audible through their breaks, transformations and silences.

• Safi Faye Hall

In English with simultaneous German translation

Part of the programme: Plural Citizenships

Plural Citizenships | HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt

Plural Citizenships is part of ‘heimaten’, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media pursuant to a resolution of the German Bundestag.