Resilience Through Verse: Narrative Reflections of Trauma Through Poetry
Join the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies as we host poets Grzegorz Kwiatkowski (Poland) & Jephta Nguherimo (Namibia) for an engaging conversation of survival, memory, and resilience through poetry. Both descendants of survivors of genocide, Jephta and Grzegorz have used literature as a means to process emotion and share their experiences.
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a Polish poet, musician, activist, and scholar. His art revolves around the subjects of history, remembrance, and ethics. He is a member of PEN America and the European literature network Versopolis. Kwiatkowski plays in the psychedelic rock band Trupa Trupa, whose music has been released by international labels like Sub Pop and Glitterbeat Records. With the band, he recorded sessions for NPR's Tiny Desk and BBC Radio 6. Kwiatkowski co-hosts the 'Virus of Hate' workshop at the University of Oxford and has been a guest lecturer at renowned universities such as the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; Yale University; UCLA; Johns Hopkins University; the University of Chicago; Northwestern University; and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Collaborating with UCLA's Vinay Lal, he initiated 'Sangam and Agora: A Forum of Poets, Philosophers, Scholars, and Autodidacts.' With Paul Lodge from the University of Oxford, he co-founded 'It Sings Therefore We Are: Philosophy and Music in Conversation.' He participates in 'The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador,' a collaborative research initiative. As an activist, Kwiatkowski is dedicated to preserving Jewish heritage in Poland, notably the once-forgotten Jewish Ghetto in Gdańsk, which is now commemorated. More at www.grzegorzkwiatkowski.com
Jephta U Nguherimo is a lifelong activist, poet and a former professional labor negotiator of Herero-descent based in the US.
He is the founding member of the OvaHerero People’s Memorial and Reconstruction Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the struggle of restorative justice for the OvaHerero people. Jephta was among the organizers of the exchanges that eventually forced the German government to confront and acknowledge Germany’s genocide of the ovaHerero and Nama people of 1904-08.
He has led conversations and presented talks on restorative justice and memory culture at various international conferences, including the Reparations and Racial Healing Summit in Accra (2022) and the 1st Session of the UN’s Permanent Forum of People of African Descent in Geneva (2022).
As a writer and poet, Jephta has also published several articles on the struggle for recognition in the Namibian and German press. He is the author of a book of poetry titled unBuried-unMarked: The Untold Namibian Story of the Victims of German Genocide between 1904–1908 and he was featured in a documentary by Al Jazeera titled “Namibia: The Price of genocide” (2021).