On May 17, attend a virtual book talk with Danish author Signe Gjessing and translator Denise Newman on Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus, an exquisite, lyrical reimagining of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work of 1922. With moderator Rosie Ellison-Balaam, they’ll discuss the book and its translation, out now from Lolli Editions.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, often noted as the most important philosophical work of the 20th century, had a broad goal: to identify the relationship between language and reality, and to define the limits of science. Following on from Wittgenstein 100 years later, Signe Gjessing updates and reimagines the Tractatus, marrying poetry with philosophy to test the boundaries of reality. Stunning, knowing, and revitalising, and glinting with stars, silk, and ecstasy, this is poetry which exacts the logical consequence of philosophy, while locating beauty and significance in the nonsense of the world.

This event will take place as a Zoom webinar; please ask questions in the chat or send them in advance to  info@amscan.org. Registration is required; please sign up at the link above. This conversation will be recorded and available later to stream on our Virtual Programming page and on our YouTube channel.

“Wilder and more generous than a straightforward satirical pastiche… An enchanting pocketbook, both mind-bending and mind-straightening”– The Guardian
“This is poetry about how we organise the spaces we enter – viable and impossible, concretely or in the mind”– ATLAS

About the Speakers

Signe Gjessing is a Danish poet. She graduated from the Danish Academy of Creative Writing, Forfatterskolen, in 2014. She has published several collections of poetry and a novella, and is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the prestigious Bodil & Jørgen Munch Christensen Prize for emerging writers. Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus is her first work to appear in English.

Denise Newman is a poet and translator based in San Francisco, who teaches at the California College of the Arts. She has published four collections of poetry and translated the work of Danish authors Inger Christensen and Naja Marie Aidt, receiving two PEN awards and an NEA fellowship for her translations.

About the Moderator

Rosie Ellison-Balaam is an editor and writer based in London.

She edits the “Lolli in Conversation” series.