Poetry Readings:
Natalie Diaz, USA. Diaz’s debut poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, has been named one of the best American poetry collections of the 2010s. This spring, she is releasing her second collection in Swedish, Postcolonial Love Poem, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. She creates vivid imagery of nature, queer sexuality, family bonds, and Mojave culture. The poems draw from the historical and ongoing experiences that shape the body constituted by Black, Latinx, and Native American women. Diaz has also been a professional basketball player, including in Malmö, and currently teaches at Yale and Arizona State University, advocating for the preservation of the Mojave language.
Uljana Wolf, Germany. A poet, translator, and essayist, Wolf’s works challenge both form and content, linguistic and physical boundaries. Having grown up in East Berlin, she reflects on concepts such as nation, exile, borders, and the role of language in establishing or altering individuals’ sense of identity. Her combination of poetry, translation, and theoretical reflection, her practices offer a bridge between art, language politics, and social analysis. This has made Wolf influential, not only as a poet but also as a thinker.
Iya Kiva is a Ukrainian poet and translator based in Lviv. She is the author of three poetry collections, the latest titled Laughter of an Extinguished Bonfire, and a book of interviews with Belarusian authors, We’ll Wake Up Different: Conversations with Contemporary Belarusian Writers on Past, Present and Future of Belarus, dedicated to protests in Belarus. Kiva’s poems have been translated into more than 35 languages. Her poetry books have been published in Bulgaria, Poland, Italy and Sweden. Her poetry collection Silence Dressed In Cyrillic Letters is upcoming at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute in early 2026. She is a laureate of numerous Ukrainian and international awards for poetry and translation.
Asmaa Azaizeh, Palestine, is a journalist and today one of the most prominent Palestinian voices in contemporary poetry. In her third poetry collection, now translated into Swedish by Jasim Mohamed, Don’t Believe Me When I Talk About War, she allows personal stories to reflect the consequences of war and occupation in poetic form. Her poems touch on longing, identity, belonging, loss, and identity. Azaizeh’s poetry serves as a way to remember and preserve human dignity under oppression. Azaizeh challenges stereotypical notions of Palestinian identity, and through her combination of journalism, poetry, and cultural production, she is regarded as both an artist and an activist.
Date och time: Saturday March 21, 13.00–13.30
Place: Uppsala City Library, Free Admission!
Language: English, German, and Arabic with translations on screen