Lyrikline – Listen to the Poet
Sjón in the Lyrikline-Studio, 1999 (c) gezett
lyrikline.org was launched in 1999 and has since developed into the world's largest website for poetic voices and poetry translations.
Currently, more than 1,700 voices of poets in more than 90 languages can be heard on Lyrikline. Over 15,000 poems are available as text and sound, linked to about 25,000 translations by more than 3,800 poetry translators. Lyrikline is not only a unique format in the field of international poetry, but also provides an immense resource for educators, researchers, students and poetry enthusiasts, as more than 2.5 million visitors to the website per year prove.
Listeners can create their own playlists with their favorite poems and they can browse individually - poems can be searched and found by poet or title as well as by genre, form and theme. Since April 2025, Lyrikline has also been offering children their own, playful access to poems at kinder.lyrikline.org.
Recordings and translations are used worldwide at partner festivals, by international cultural institutions and in poetry education at schools and universities. All content is available free of charge, and an international network of more than 50 partners works continuously with Haus für Poesie to make new material available. Recordings are made by partners worldwide as well as in the Lyrikline studio at Haus für Poesie, which has been managed by Heiko Strunk since 1999.
For translators of poetry, the Lyrikline website is an indispensable means of exchanging ideas. With its online translation tool, it also offers the means for collaborative literary translation.
In 2005, five years after its inception, Lyrikline was awarded the prestigious Grimme Online Award.