Dance the Orange: Poets in Dialogue with Rilke

Please join us for a vibrant evening celebrating the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke in dialogue with contemporary German poets.

To mark 100 years since Rilke's death, please join us for an evening of poetry from a groundbreaking new anthology - Tanzt die Orange (Dance the Orange) - that brings Rilke’s poetry into the language of today.

Curated by award-winning poets Jan Wagner and Norbert Hummelt, the collection features reinterpretations of Rilke’s verses by 75 leading voices in contemporary German-language poetry. At this special London event, Wagner and Hummelt will read selections from the anthology and discuss the enduring resonance of Rilke’s work.

Moderating the event is the acclaimed translator and academic Karen Leeder, who will guide the conversation and provide English translations of the poems, opening a dialogue between Rilke’s legacy and today’s poetic voices.

The event will be presented in both German and English.

NORBERT HUMMELT was born in 1962 in Neuss, studied German and English studies in Cologne and lives in Berlin as a poet, essayist, and translator.
He newly translated T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Four Quartets into German and is the editor of W.B. Yeats' poems in German. Recently published works: 1922 – Miracle Year of Words (Luchterhand 2022), Eselsohren. Essays on Literature (Nimbus Verlag 2024), Tanzt die Orange – 100 Answers to Rilke (with Jan Wagner, Hanser Berlin 2025), and the poetry collection Hellichter Tag (Luchterhand 2025).
He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including the Hölty Prize for Poetry (2018) and the Rainer Malkowski Prize (2021).

KAREN LEEDER is the Schwarz-Taylor Chair of German at the University of Oxford. As an academic she works especially on modern and contemporary literature and is the co-editor (with Lyn Marven) of Ulrike Draesner: A Companion (2022). She is also a prize-winning translator of modern German literature, most recently Durs Grünbein's Psyche Running: Selected Poems 2005-2022 (Seagull, 2024) for which she was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize 2025.

JAN WAGNER was born 1971 in Hamburg and has been living in Berlin since 1995. Poet, essayist, translator of Anglo-American poetry (Charles Simic, James Tate, Margaret Atwood, Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas, Simon Armitage, Michael Hofmann, Matthew Sweeney, Robin Robertson, Jo Shapcott, Sujata Bhatt and many others), he has published eight poetry collections since 2001, most recently Steine & Erden (Stones & Earths, 2023). Regentonnenvariationen (Rain Barrel Variations), his sixth collection, won the Leipzig Bookfair Prize in 2015; Selected Poems 2001-2015 was published by Hanser Verlag in Spring 2016.
A selection in English - Self-Portrait With a Swarm of Bees. Selected Poems, translated by Iain Galbraith - was published in 2015 by Arc, UK, and another English selection, translated by David Keplinger, came out in 2017 with Milkweed Editions, USA, under the title The Art of Topiary. Selected Poems. In 2026, Milkweed will publish Wisp. New Selected Poems, again translated by David Keplinger. With Italian poet Federico Italiano he assembled a comprehensive anthology of contemporary European poetry, Grand Tour. Reisen durch die junge Lyrik Europas (Hanser, 2019).
Wagner has received numerous awards, among them the Anna-Seghers-Award (2004), the Friedrich-Hölderlin-Award (2011), the Georg-Büchner-Prize (2017), the Prix Max Jacob (France, 2020) and the Premio di Poesia “Città di Pescara” (Italy, 2023). He is a member of the German Academy of Language and Literature.

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