In the enclosed Kulturquartier at Wedding’s silent green, an eager audience braves the heat for the 25th edition of Poesiefestival Berlin, Europe’s largest festival of poetry. Despite the weekend’s 30-degree highs, South Carolina native Terrance Hayes, one of the biggest names in contemporary American verse, arrives fresh as a daisy and remains relaxed under the sweltering stage lights. “I knew y’all were freaky in Berlin, but this!” he jokes of his warm welcome as the crowd laughs.
Hayes is the author of seven poetry collections, a professor of creative writing at New York University and a MacArthur fellow. Readers may be familiar with his National Book Award-winning collection Lighthead (2010), or American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin (2018), a response to the political rise and subsequent election of Donald Trump in 2016. So to Speak (2023) is his latest volume, released simultaneously with the essay collection Watch Your Language (2023).
During the first half of his Berlin talk – titled “Things will get less ugly inevitably hopefully”, a line from his 2019 poem American Sonnet for the New Year – Hayes discusses his influences, from Kendrick Lamar to Sylvia Plath, his Jeopardy-level knowledge of poetic form and history, his mother, and the relationship between poetry and basketball. Then, he reads.
Lines sound designed to stay in the mind like memories. “We have no wounds to speak of beyond the ways our parents expressed their love,” and “I wanted to know how my mother passed her days having never touched her husband’s asshole” among them (both from his 2016 poem Ars Poetica with Bacon). Poems, he tells us, are often meant to be read alone, not spoken aloud.
And yet as a speaker, Hayes is mesmerising, funny and charismatic; as a writer, he’s clever, questioning and emotionally moving. The combination makes for an unforgettable two-hour talk. His performance style varies from poem to poem, some spoken like booming sermons, others like apologies or prayers.
As the readings intensify, he gracefully pulls a spotted handkerchief out of his pocket to dab his forehead, a hallmark of a true southerner. “I always sweat when I read this one,” Hayes says playfully before jumping into a reading of his poem George Floyd, published in June 2020. At the end, there is a brief moment of silence before the audience erupts in applause.
Hayes was just one of 149 artists involved in Poesiefestival’s 18-day programme. Since 2000, the event, which is a project from Kulturbrauerei’s Haus für Poesie, has invited poets from all across the globe to lecture or perform their art. The title of his talk represented a hesitant optimism, witnessed both on stage and in a room full of Germans and non-Germans united in awe.
Because the moderator left no time for questions, I and a few others stayed behind afterwards to meet the man behind the commanding performance. As Hayes and I chatted – two Americans far from home – I told him how much of a fan I was of his work, especially during my time as an undergraduate at the university where he now teaches. He thanked me and continued signing books, friendly and beaming. On the way home, I recalled a phrase from the titular poem of American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin: “to be divided is to be multiplied”. ★★★★★
- To learn more about Poesiefestival, click here.
