Professor (emeritus) Dr Günter Blamberger & Professor Uljana Wolf: Research is shaping the dialogue with literature

Günter Blamberger is a literary scholar at the University of Cologne and initiator of Poetica, the international Festival for World Literature. Together with the poet and translator Uljana Wolf, he combines artistic and scientific research with public dialogue, making literature tangible as a form of knowledge and societal transfer.

1. What role has transfer played in your career so far?

Literature has the power to entertain, teach, and unsettle. My aim was, and is, not only to analyse its formal style, but also to convey the fascination with the knowledge embodied within literary works and their distinctive sense of reality and possibility. In turn, our own research benefits from the reactions of students, readers, and audiences at public events. Knowledge transfer is not a one-way street; it is based on reciprocity.

2. Which of your transfer activities would you like to report on, and what can you tell us about them?

The Poetica emerged from a Centre for Advanced Studies that the archaeologist Dietrich Boschung and I founded at the UoC in 2009 with funding from the former Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The aim of this international research group called Morphomata – Greek for ‘processes of formation’ – was to analyse the power of knowledge embodied in artistic artefacts. By establishing the Poetica World Literature Festival in the context of Morphomata, the group sought dialogue with poets, convinced that not only the sciences, but also the arts generate knowledge in a sustainable way, and that comparing aesthetic ideas provides excellent access to understanding foreign cultures and their potentially diverse responses to fundamental questions of human existence.

Poetica is characterized by the intensive connection of literature, science, and the public, as well as the variety of its event formats and venues in Cologne. Together with curators, we select the guests and themes for each festival – for example, ‘Beyond Identities’ as a counterpoint to the mania of identity politics, or ‘The Art of Resistance’ in defence of artistic freedom and freedom of expression – while fostering a dialogue between poetry and science. The authors always read their poetry in the original language, with actors performing the translation. A book publication, available at the start of each Poetica, compiles essays and selected poems by the participants.

In the ten festivals held so far, over 100 authors from more than 40 countries participated, including prominent names such as Nobel Prize winners Herta Müller and Svetlana Alexeiyevich, Peace Prize winners Navid Kermani and Serhij Zhadan, the poet and singer Patti Smith, and Büchner Prize winners such as Jürgen Becker, Marcel Beyer, and Durs Grünbein.

3. What concrete social impact have you achieved through this activity so far?

The Poetica is the only international poetry festival in NRW, with an overwhelming response from both the public and the press. The festival has been nominated several times for Cologne’s cultural event of the year, with up to 1,000 visitors often filling the opening event in the university’s main lecture hall. To my knowledge, it is also unique in Germany that a university has founded an international poetry festival. Equally remarkable is that, following the end of Morphomata’s regular funding period and the associated support from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space, Poetica has continued to receive generous funding from the Ministry of Culture and Science and the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen since 2021.

“Poetry is the search for splendour. Poetry is the royal road that takes us the furthest,” said the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, guest of the first Poetica 2015 – a promise that every Poetica has honoured so far and will continue to do so in the future. After ten years of directing the festival, my successor as the Rector’s Representative for the Poetica, Uljana Wolf, will now be carrying this commitment forward. She has received numerous awards for her work as a poet, translator, and essayist. The University of Cologne has appointed her as honorary professor for ‘Contemporary International Poetry and its Curation and Mediation’.