A State of Exception: Poetry Reading by Durs Grünbein and Don Paterson

Special EVENT

A State of Exception: Poetry Reading by Durs Grünbein and Don Paterson

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 Thursday 10 December 2026

  17.30–19.30

 At the Weston Library 

     £10 (£5 students), booking required

Book now

About this event

Join us at the Weston Library for a poetry reading and panel discussion.

17.30–18.30: poetry reading and discussion
18.30–19.00: drinks reception in Blackwell Hall

Speakers

Durs Grünbein is one of the most significant and successful writers of his generation in Germany. In 1995 he was honoured with the most prestigious German literary award, the Georg Büchner Prize, at the age of 33. Since then he has published more than 30 books of poetry and prose, which have been translated into dozens of languages. In 2019 he was the Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of European Literature in Oxford. He has been awarded the Ordre Pour le Mérite des Arts et des Letters and the Great Cross with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and a raft of international poetry prizes.

Don Paterson is a Scottish poet, writer, and musician whose work spans award-winning poetry, aphorisms, translations, and poetic theory. Rising from jazz-folk success with Lammas, his debut poetry collection Nil Nil (1993) won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Subsequent works like God’s Gift to Women, Landing Light, and Rain earned him the TS Eliot Prize, Whitbread Poetry Award and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. His most recent collections are The Arctic (2022) and Zonal (2022).

Karen Leeder is a writer, translator and Schwarz-Taylor Chair of the German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. She especially translates German-language poetry. As a translator she has won many awards, including the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, the Frederick Nims Memorial Prize and a PEN Heim award. Most recently she was awarded the Griffin Prize 2025 for her translation of Durs Grünbein, Psyche Running: Selected Poems 2005–2022.

Event information

 


Book tickets

 10 December 2026

 17.30 – 19.30

     £10 (£5 students), booking required

 At the Weston Library

Book now


Contact

georgia.binning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk


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