Testimonies of the Future is 1 year old! To celebrate this occasion, we once again invited everyone to Max-Beer-Straße. In the early summer warmth, guests sat outside in the garden on our famous orange chairs and listened intently to our poets Razia Karimi, Abdul Ahmad Pouya, Murtaza Hosseini, Mykhailo Krasilnikov, Leyla Akyildiz, and the poems of Ali Alzaeem, who unfortunately could not attend last minute and was spontaneously and very capably represented by our former intern Imane Berradi. The German translations were read by our poet Rojin Namer, and the reading was accompanied by guitar music from our volunteer Emilia Lima.
While the Poetry Project usually revolves around words, for the first anniversary, we compiled the numbers behind our work: In this year, Testimonies of the Future has engaged 36 poets who have regularly written (and continue to write) with us in approximately 60 workshops organized with our partner PEN Berlin . We have reached 1,530 people through 16 readings (with the anniversary reading being the 17th, attended by about 30 additional guests), and to date, we have 1,885 followers on Instagram. Additionally, we launched a new website featuring 46 new texts in 6 languages.
Overall, the Poetry Project has been around for quite some time – now for a full 7 years. During this time, the project has gone through 2 funding phases with Democracy Live! and the bpb.
We thank our poets and our 10 volunteers for their tireless work and great dedication, and we hope for another joint funding phase!
