A very special bilingual poetry slam will take place on Thursday, 17 October at the Unikum. All participants will slam in both High German and Low German.
Whether as the "Low German and Sater Frisian" department at the Institute for German Studies or as a Bachelor's degree programme in Low German - "Platt" plays a major role in research and teaching at the University of Oldenburg. For the past year, the Low German Forum, which was founded by students, has been working to bring the regional language into everyday university life beyond lectures and research projects.
For the first time, the forum is now organising a High and Low German poetry slam together with Slam² - or as the organisers confidently announce: the "Low German event of the year".
Four poetry slammers will take to the stage of the Unikum at the University of Oldenburg on Thursday, 17 October from 7 p.m. and compete for the audience's favour and applause with their self-written texts. The speciality: all of them will compete in the first round with a High German text and in a second round with a Low German text. The two slammers who make it to the final round can decide for themselves in which language they slam for victory.
The audience decides who makes it to the final and wins by applause. Two members of the university are among the participants: Nikos Saul, a doctoral candidate in the Low German and Sater Frisian department at the Institute for German Studies, and Lucia-Philtje Gerst, a lecturer at the Language Centre. They are up against strong "Platt competition": Gesche Gloystein is head of the Low German department at the Emsländische Landschaft and Dr Wilko Zücht is not only responsible for Low German literature at the Oldenburg State Library, but has also published the "Ostfriesische Grammatik" as a book and written numerous Low German columns for the Ostfriesen-Zeitung.
