HAUS FÜR POESIE

Agi Mishol (born 1946 in Transylvania, Romania), the daughter of Hungarian Shoah survivors, is regarded as the most important poet of modern Hebrew-language poetry and is certainly its most popular voice alongside Yehuda Amichai. She has been publishing poetry since 1972 and has now published 20 books, all of them bestsellers. The volume Gedicht für den unvollkommenen Menschen (roughly: Poem for the Imperfect Man, Edition Lyrik Kabinett, Hanser Verlag, German translation: Anne Birkenhauer), published in 2024, brings together a generous selection of texts from the last 21 years. These are poems about mathematics and herding geese, about Elvis and the loneliness of night. Sometimes they develop into hymns to the tenderness of a left shirt pocket; other times, they unfold like directions—with the orange glow of the sun in the side mirror and peacocks strutting across the road. Agi Mishol understands, perhaps better than any other poet, how to speak quietly.

Reading & Conversation: Agi Mishol
Moderation: Anne Birkenhauer