GLOBALE: Writers for Freedom – Enoh Meyomesse in conversation with Hans Thill

After Chinese author and musician Liao Yiwu raised his voice for his friend and former fellow inmate Li Bifeng to start the series of »Writers for Freedom« events, Cameroonian poet, journalist and human rights activist Enoh Meyomesse will be our guest on 4th November 2015 to read out his texts and tell us about his time in prison.
 
Imprisoned in November 2011 following his candidature for the presidential elections in Cameroon and sentenced to seven years imprisonment at the end of 2012, Meyomesse was unexpectedly freed from the Kondengui Central Prison in Yaoundé in April 2015 and has now received the opportunity to come to German and continue his literary activity in freedom through the Elsbeth-Wolffheim literature grant from the city of Darmstadt and the Writers-in-Exile programme by the German PEN branch.
 
He is accompanied by poet, translator and Writers for Peace representative from the German PEN branch, Hans Thill. Both will discuss with presenter Gerwig Epkes (SWR2 LiteraturEN) about this case and about the various opportunities to support imprisoned writers.
 
Meyomesse looks back on the publication of more than fifteen books and countless poems, essays and texts about political and cultural events of the day. His poetry volumes »Gedichte des Häftlings in Kondengui« [Poems of the Prisoner in Kondengui] (2013) and »Darmstadt. Eine afrikanische Liebeserklärung« [Darmstadt. An African Declaration of Love] (2015) are published in German.

Video Documentary:

ZKM | Institute for Visual Media

Camera: Sarah Binder, Martina Rotzal
Editing: Sophia Kessel