‘The Poetry Project’ supports youth with refugee background to express experiences through poetry
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The Poetry Project is an innovative literary dialogue project that supports young people with refugee backgrounds as they express their experiences through poetry. The project specifically uses the poetic form to express and preserve feelings and stories in verse. Things that seem unspeakable at first are transformed into an artistic dialogue; conversely, things that once seemed “foreign” become more familiar. To the Poems →
Yasser Niksada was 13 years old when he came to Germany. He’s originally from the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan, but his family fled from the Taliban to Tehran when he was still a small child. His parents saw no prospects for the young Yasser in Iran and sent him to Europe on his own.
Image: © Rottkay
Barely a year later, Yasser wrote his first poem, “Traces,” about his experiences on the run. "I suppressed some of the things that happened on the way. They only come up again now through writing, and that’s a form of closure," he said in an interview with ZDF tivi in 2017. "Someone who grew up in security and prosperity can't understand that. But if you explain it, for example in a poem, people might think about what would happen if they were to suffer the same fate: war, desolation, or hopelessness. Then they can relate to it and understand it better."
In Iran, as in Afghanistan, poetry plays an important role, as project founder and SPIEGEL foreign correspondent Susanne Koelbl has repeatedly observed on her journalistic travels. Feelings and stories are preserved in verses and are recited in everyday situations—whether at dinner, during a taxi ride, or while shopping. The Poetry Project is built on this narrative tradition, which thrives on a special linguistic density and emotional depth. Things that at first may seem unspeakable are thus transformed into an artful dialogue; conversely, understanding is fostered for what initially appears “foreign.”
From 2017 to 2019, The Poetry Project was supported by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, as part of the federal program “Demokratie leben!” (Living Democracy!), and by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung with the project “Flucht und Ankunft” (Flight and Arrival).
Throughout Germany, young people with and without a refugee background met regularly with workshop leaders and translators to write poetry. In all, around 750 writers got together and wrote thousands of poems. The idea came from project founder Susanne Koelbl, who repeatedly experienced the power of poetry during her work as a SPIEGEL foreign correspondent in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran. She encountered poetry in all kinds of everyday situations, whether in a cab or over dinner, and was able to give space to emotions that would otherwise not find expression. Berlin artist Rottkay provided photography and visual design for the project, while Theresa Rüger took on organizational and literary management.
The young poets wrote in their native languages about subjects that affect us all. About what they’ve experienced, their expectations, how they imagine their future to be. About foreignness and longing, about hope and love, and contemporary politics.
Their works were presented at the end of each workshop day, with the whole group working together to find the best-fitting translation for a particular passage, word, or term. These were wonderful moments of mutual recognition which we hoped to bring to the public. The poems that were drafted in our workshops were presented at readings and festivals, in magazines, radio reports, in plays and in films, so that the ongoing intercultural dialogue could include as many people as possible even beyond the project’s duration.
The first volume of poetry was published along with the opening of the international literature festival berlin in 2016. The texts published there were awarded the Else Lasker-Schüler Poetry Prize in 2018. A print edition of these texts in four languages is now available from our online shop under the title Allein nach Europa (Fled to Europe alone). In 2019, our poets Rojin Namer and Shahzamir Hataki received the THEO (Berlin-Brandenburg Prize for Young Literature) in the categories Poetry and Multilingual. Rojin has also won several awards at the lyrix (national competition for young poetry). She won a monthly competition in 2019 and won the annual competition for 2020; in 2022 and 2023 she joined the prize jury. At the end of the project, a comprehensive anthology was published under the title Ich wollte bleiben. Ich ging. (I wanted to stay. I left.) which is also available in our shop.
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