Poetry Session

Poetry allows us to discover the world. We can play with it, it inspires, it raises questions, speaks from the heart. The festival celebrates this literary genre, which is still considered a gem for enthusiasts, yet is as lively as ever, through the poetry of outstanding poets whom we are allowed to listen to on this day: Simone Lappert, Daniela Seel, Yevgeniy Breyger, and Jan Wagner. All four will present their poetry sometimes together in front of a large audience, sometimes in direct dialogue.

The venue, Schloss Rheda, is the residence castle of the Prince of Bentheim-Tecklenburg. The garden and park invite you to stroll in the sun, to be enchanted and inspired by words and sounds in selected places. The particularly brave can venture onto the castle moat, where they can get up close and personal with poetry in a rowboat – very intimate and personal, the listener and the poetry. The castle's own chapel is one of the most idiosyncratic yet also one of the finest buildings from the Staufer period in Germany and will be filled that afternoon with a variety of word sounds and impressive music.

The cellist Ilona Kindt, known as a member of the Boulanger Trio, performs solo, among others, with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra. For this afternoon, she teams up with guitarist Jerzy Chwastyk. They will accompany the read poetry and also present compositions by Franz Schubert, Gabriel Fauré, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and others.