Your Voice Matters

At the end of November, we invited guests to Pumpe Youth Cultural Center in Berlin-Tiergarten for our first co-organized reading with PEN Berlin, under the title “Your Voice Matters.” PEN Berlin has been our partner since May; together, we organize workshops led by renowned authors in our focus languages: Arabic, Kurdish, Persian and Ukrainian. 

"Do you remember that time you made a promise, / if I did well in school and was always honest, / daddy will come back and we can have a party? / I can’t keep that promise, my son, I’m so sorry." So reads a touching poem by 23-year-old Mykhailo Krasilnikov from the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, who performed his own work on stage for the very first time that evening. The event brought together participants from all our workshops and language groups, who shared their impressive work with us and each other. In addition to Mykhailo, thirteen other young poets took the stage: Rahmetullah Berxwedan Andan, Nesîbe Gûneylî, Atto Abdulsalam, Leyla Akyildiz, Bahadîn Akhan, Jaklin Shilbaya, Mariia Kaziun, Dmytro Krasilnikov, Nadiia Kulish, Razia Karimi, Tayebah Joya, Sarina Mohammadi, and Shahzamir Hataki. 

Author and PEN board member Sophie Sumburane led the event, and author and translator Zoë Beck performed our poets’ texts in German. A discussion session with two PEN workshop leaders, Meral Şimşek (Kurdish) and Irina Bondas (Ukrainian) started the evening. Sozdar Jafarzadeh acted as interpreter into and from Kurdish. The conversation touched upon the authors’ personal motivations and how they engaged with the workshops, as well as the dynamics between the participants and, of course, the act of writing itself.

We are grateful for the inspiring atmosphere and the enriching exchange. In keeping with the motto of the evening, we are glad that we could give a platform to so many young voices. We would like to thank all the readers and Birgit Schmitz from PEN Berlin for conceptualizing this event!