"This is the best journey we've made so far," revealed our poet Rojin Namer about the eventful day we spent at Wendelstein Gymnasium with a reading in front of the students and two subsequent workshops. We were invited as part of the youth initiative "School without Racism - School with Courage" by the patron of Wendelstein Gymnasium, Klaus Schamberger.
About 200 students from the 10th grade had gathered in the gymnasium auditorium on Thursday morning to listen to our poets. Before this unusually young audience, Robina Karimi, Rojin Namer, Shahzamir Hataki, and Yasser Niksada read their poems in Persian, Arabic, and German. The students listened attentively and quietly – it was reported to us afterwards that it's never that quiet in the classrooms. The tenth graders had even prepared a small gesture for the speakers: each received a little notebook for future poems and a traditional Nuremberg gingerbread. Following the reading, groups of curious students quickly formed around the four poets, questions were asked, contacts were exchanged, and commonalities were found. The two workshops that followed provided further opportunity for getting to know each other better. Together with the students, we wrote letters to sympathizers of the AfD and to the Foreigners' Registration Office, and pondered what words like integration and foreignness actually mean to us. The result were touching, powerful texts and even a few tears.
We thank the students for their openness and incredibly warm welcome. Special thanks also go to the responsible teacher, Naemi Winner; the city tour in Nuremberg and the communal dinner and breakfast were all very enjoyable for all of us. We hope for a reunion!
