Uljana Wolf will discuss the role that poetic form, word play and translation carry in times like these with Mónica de la TorreAbout this Event
© Villa Massimo Alberto Novelli
and present "Dancing Double: Poetry Reading and Conversation with Uljana Wolf and Mónica de la Torre." Uljana Wolf, who is currently the DAAD Chair for Contemporary Poetics at NYU, will discuss the role that poetic form, word play and translation can play in times like these with experimental poet and translator Mónica de la Torre, whose recent publication Pause the Document (Nightboat Books, 2025) examines the documentation of our lives—whether through language, memory, time—and the dissonance in that documentation. Ioanna Kostopoulou will introduce the event.
The work of German poet, translator and essayist Uljana Wolf explores the space between languages – a “tingel-tangel” where false friends mingle with the babble of child language and the Babel of poetic similarities, a “lengevitch” ballroom where Romantic translation theorist Friedrich Schleiermacher almost dances with Gertrude Stein. Her writings consider questions of migration, silence, identity and the mother tongue-paradigm while imagining new kinships based on the “etymological gossip” of puns, fairy tales, mythology.
About the Speakers
is a German poet, translator and essayist. Her translations of poetry, often collaborative projects, include titles by Kim Hyesoon, Don Mee Choi, Erín Moure, Valzhyna Mort and Eugene Ostashevsky. Since 2025 she has been the director of the international poetry festival „Poetica“ in Cologne, Germany. She teaches poetry and translation at various institutions such as the Pratt Berlin Program and Institut für Sprachkunst in Vienna. Her books include muttertask. Gedichte (2023), Etymologischer Gossip. Reden und Essays (2021), awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and forthcoming in English with Nightboat, as well as kochanie today i bought bread: poems (transl. from the German by Grace Nissan, World Poetry Books 2023) and subsisters: selected poems (transl. from German by Sophie Seita, *Belladonna 2021). A recent study on her work is entitled Uljana Wolf: Poetry, Translation, Contestation, ed. by Áine McMurtry.
is a poet, translator, and scholar, born and raised in Mexico City. Her books include Pause the Document (2025), Repetition Nineteen (2020), Public Domain (2008), and Talk Shows (2007). She has published several books in her native Mexico City, including Taller de Taquimecanografía (Tumbona), written jointly with the eponymous women artists' collective she co-founded. With Alex Balgiu, she coedited the international anthology Women in Concrete Poetry 1959–79 (Primary Information, 2020) and is coeditor of the volume Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon, 2001). De la Torre has edited BOMB Magazine and the Brooklyn Rail. She is the recipient of a Foundation or Contemporary Arts C.D. Wright Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and a Creative Capital grant, and teaches poetry and translation at Brooklyn College.
Attendance:
While NYU has ended COVID-19 related restrictions and policies, we continue to remind and recommend to members of the NYU community that they stay up-to-date on their boosters and stay home if they feel sick. Masks are always welcome.
Accessibility:
The first floor of Deutsches Haus at NYU, where our auditorium is located and where a majority of our events take place, can be made wheelchair accessible through the use of our ramp. If you would like for a Deutsches Haus staff member to set up this ramp for you, please call our Front Desk at +1 212-998-8660 upon your arrival. For any other accessibility-related questions or concerns, please email us at [email protected] or call us at +1 212-998-8660.
"Dancing Double: Poetry Reading and Conversation with Uljana Wolf and Mónica de la Torre" is funded by the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).
Event Venue
Deutsches Haus At New York University, 42 Washington Mews, New York, United States
USD 0.00
