Wagner, Jan

Jan Wagner (c) Villa Massimo Alberto Novelli

Jan Wagner, born in Hamburg in 1971, lives in Berlin. He has published nine volumes of poetry since 2001, most recently  “Steine & Erden” (Hanser Berlin 2023) as well as the essay collection “Der glückliche Augenblick” (Hanser Berlin 2021). Together with Federico Italiano, he edited the comprehensive anthology of contemporary European poetry “Grand Tour. Reisen durch die junge Lyrik Europas” (Grand Tour. Journeys through the young poetry of Europe, Hanser 2019). Wagner translates the poets Charles Simic, James Tate, Matthew Sweeney, among others. He received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2015 for his poetry collection “Regentonnenvariationen” (2014) and was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 2017, the Prix Max Jacob (France) in 2020 and the PONT international literary prize for intercultural cooperation (Slovenia) in 2021.

Festival Content

POETRY TALK: YANG LIAN & JAN WAGNER

Night in the Palace of Mosquitoes

Atelierraum | 7/5 € Tickets

Yang Lian and Jan Wagner are two of the most renowned poets of their languages. They have known each other for almost ten years and have translated each other’s work since then. In this event, they’re presenting their poems in both Chinese and German, and will speak about their collaboration, the difficulties of translating poems into another language and another culture, as well as about the power of translations when they succeed.

Lian, Yang • Wagner, Jan