The George Town Literature Festival (GTLF) celebrates its 10th anniversary this year with the theme
micro-cosmos, that deals with topics of communication and connection amongst people in times of a global pandemic.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary GTLF published “Muara”, which is a collaboration between GTLF and the Svara Journal. With essays, short stories, poems, book reviews and translations, Muara brings established and emerging writers from Malaysia and around the world together.
Featured in the publication is Austrian poet Georg Trakl. His works “Grodek”, “Klage” and "Ruh und Schweigen" have been translated from German to English by Pauline Fan.
This year, the festival is taking place in hybrid, offering an exciting, interesting, socially relevant programme that includes a series of specially curated podcasts and videos in both English and Bahasa Malaysia. These are offered in the form of talks, discussions, readings and radio shows. Many Malaysian writers and translators as well as international authors will participate in this programme.
This year’s headliners include writer and social activist Marina Mahathir, Indonesian writer and screenwriter Eka Kurniawan, Japanese writer and literary scholar Minae Mizumura and German poet and writer Jan Wagner.
Jan Wagner
© Villa Massimo/Alberto Novelli
studied English in Hamburg, Dublin and Berlin, his current home town. Here he works in the three-field economy of poetry, poetry translation and literary criticism. His poems have already been translated into 40 languages and he has received numerous awards for these, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. In 2017 he also won the Georg Büchner Prize for his works.
The podcast with Jan Wagner
"Magic of the Second Order" is part of the online programme of GTLF.
A tea bag unravels into a cosmic vision; a swarm of insects dance like ancient inscriptions. One of the most celebrated German poets of his generation, Jan Wagner’s poetry illuminates the everyday world with a sense of wonder and playfulness. In this conversation with GTLF Director Pauline Fan, Jan Wagner shares his thoughts on the magic of poetry, his poetic sensibilities and influences, and how a detailed observation of physical reality reveals contours of the metaphysical.
George Town Literary Festival
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