Wednesday program: Interstitial Poetry 

Writing accounts for a large part of Kiswanson’s practice. He began writing early in life as a way of trying to understand the world and his own identity. This evening, we will explore the potential of poetry to create new ways of thinking and expressing ourselves about language, loss, memory and lack of roots. How can poetry inform and articulate the condition of interlinguistic and intercultural experiences? Our point of departure for the discussion is the philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant from Martinique, who has been seminal to Kiswanson’s practice. Glissant neither suppresses nor seeks reconciliation with colonial history but approaches it as a separate state from which we can gather the strength to move ahead into the future.  

In Swedish.

Participants: Christina Kullberg, a professor of French literature, who has translated several of Glissant’s works into Swedish; Sorin Masifi, a poet who recently published the volume of poems Staten, systrarna, dikten [State, Sisters, Poetry]. Moderated by Sara Abdollahi, critic and essayist.    

Sara Abdollahi is a book critic, essayist and a member of the SITE editorial team. She has contributed to the arts pages of Expressen and SvD and is currently a critic for the arts section of Göteborgsposten. She was formerly the editor-in-chief of the magazine Författaren. Since 2018, Abdollahi is a member of the jury committee for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize.  

Christina Kullberg is a professor of French literature at Uppsala University, specialising in contemporary Caribbean literature and theory, and early modern travel writing. She has translated Édouard Glissant’s essays into Swedish for Relationens filosofi: Omfångets poesi (2012), together with Johan Sehlberg, and is currently translating Glissant’s early poetry, Soleil de la conscience from 1956.  

Sorin Masifi is a poet who recently published her critically acclaimed debut Staten Systrarna Dikten. The book is an archive of loss, stretching back over time and space, a grieving process for a sister and a childhood. A childhood intertwined with Kurdistan, struggle and the philosophical questions of statelessness. Sorin Masifi has an MA in English literature from Stockholm University and works as a librarian at Rinkeby Library.  

Admission to the exhibition included in the ticket price. Limited number of participants.  

Images: Christina Kullberg. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt. Sara Abdollahi. Sorin Masifi. Poto: Lina E Adamo.