WHERE I DIE IS MY FOREIGN - Poetry reading by: SAID
SA 4.3, 19H ACUD Studio
Free entrance
SAID returns to Iran once, after the fall of the Shah in 1979, but leaves the country again after only six weeks in disappointed hope of democratization: "Beloved, / on these streets I can / not even hold your hand. / How mocked here / love is. / Where I die / is my foreign".
SAID, born in Tehran in 1947, first came to Munich in 1965 to study political science. It was here, as part of the Confederation of Iranian Students (CISNU), that his political activism began. Since the 1980s, he has published numerous poems, stories and essays in German - the language of exile in which he found a home: "in our arid exile / no one wanted my Persian poems. / only battle songs / were the order of the day in our circle [...] so i took refuge / in the german language; / which welcomed me / as hospitably as it could." SAID wrote about exile, love, spirituality and death, denounced the dictatorship in Iran as well as the political conditions in Germany. He was honored for his extensive work with the Chamisso Prize and the Goethe Medal, among others. From 2000 to 2002, he was president of the German PEN. He remained in German exile until his death in 2021.
On this evening, Fariba Vafi, Mahmoud Hosseini Zad and Tanasgol Sabbagh will discuss and read SAID's poetry together with Maryam Aras. This will be followed by a concert by musician and composer Elshan Ghasimi.
A joint event of the Goethe-Institut and the House of Poetry.
In reading and conversation: Tanasgol Sabbagh | Fariba Vafi | Mahmoud Hosseini Zad