Intermezzo – artists in conversation
The poet and writer Ronya Othmann in conversation
6. June 2022, 11:47
When Ronya Othmann entered the Bachmann competition in 2019, her text “Seventy-Four” was hotly debated by the jury. Othmann, whose father is a Yazidi Kurd, described the IS genocide against the Yazidis in a very documentary way. A year later, Othmann’s debut novel “Die Sommer” was published, which this time dealt with her childhood and her vacations with her Yezidi grandparents in Syria in a very lyrical way. Last year she also dedicated a volume of poetry to the subject, titled “The Crimes”. In an interview with Wolfgang Popp, Ronya Othmann talks about her commemorative journeys to the places of her childhood, how she experienced the mafia-like Assad regime in Syria and why German baroque poetry of all things became so important for her volume of poetry.