German Poetry

New book

2007-11-29T13:26:00.000Z

New German Literature: Life Writing and Dialogues with the Arts

ed. by Frank Finlasy, Julian Preece and Ruth J. Owen (2007)

This is a collection of essays based on two conferences held in Leeds in recent years. Contributions focus on the variety and depth of the 'dialogue' between contemporary German literature and other art forms - in the sense of all types of cultural transfer across media - from literature to photography, film, painting, architecture, music, and back.

Poetikdozentur

2007-11-14T11:19:00.000Z

Kiel, 19.11.-22.11.2007
Im Sommersemester 1996 wurde am Institut für Neuere deutsche Literatur und Medien eine Poetikdozentur eingerichtet, die nach dem in Kiel geborenen Dichter Detlev von Liliencron benannt wurde. Als einzige ihrer Art in Deutschland ist diese Dozentur ausschließlich der Lyrik vorbehalten. Die bisherigen Dozenten waren: Doris Runge, Raoul Schrott, Dirk von Petersdorff, Thomas Rosenlöcher, Harald Hartung, Dagmar Leupold, Ilma Rakusa, Oskar Pastior, Ulrike Draesner, Michael Lentz.
Brigitte Oleschinski ist mit der Kieler Liliencron-Dozentur 2007 ausgezeichnet worden. Die in Berlin lebende Schriftstellerin ist seit ihrer ersten Lyriksammlung Mental Heat Control mit Gedichtbänden und Essays zu einer herausragenden Stimme in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartslyrik geworden.
Die Termine der Dozentur im Überblick:
Mo, 19.11., 20 Uhr, Literaturhaus;
Eröffnungslesung: Brigitte Oleschinski liest aus ihrem lyrischen Werk
Di, 20.11., 18 Uhr, Universität;
Poetikvorlesung von Brigitte Oleschinski: "Zur Zukunft der Poesie - und was sie, vielleicht, mit der zeitgenössischen Lyrik zu tun hat."
Do, 22.11., 20 Uhr, Literaturhaus;
Brigitte Oleschinski und Richard Kämmerlings im Gespräch über die Zukunft der Poesie und die zeitgenössische Lyrik; Moderation: Steffen Martus
Auskunft erteilt: lkorten@ndl-medien.uni-kiel.de

Podcasting Goethe

2007-10-31T11:15:00.000Z

A podcasting project is being developed at the University of Warwick, which includes texts and recorded readings of Goethe's poetry.

Film Review: Sehnsucht

2007-08-09T11:54:00.000+01:00

This 2006 film, by Valeska Griesbach, evokes a provincial backwater where the pace of life is stultifying. The main protagonist goes through the motions creating literal noise and sparks as he does his metalwork, but everything else within and without is still and silent. This man has no interior vitality; he says almost nothing. A jaunt with the local volunteer firefighters shows us the limited sphere he will inhabit, and the cliches he will mouthe, for the rest of his life.
At this point, he wakes up in bed with Rose, who rather than being an exciting alternative to his sweet, simple wife, replicates her. The man does not reflect on his relationships, nor articulate any emotion. Indeed, immediately before the encounter with Rose, we see him drunkenly gyrating to millionnaire Robbie Williams's track with the repeated line 'I just want to feel...'. This is one of the most striking scenes in the film, funny and subversive. His wife, likewise, does not seem to have her own words, but tries out phrases inherited from third-rate romantic fiction. Despite his disconnection and alienation, the man is compelled to go to Rose and sustain the infidelity which confuses him. Just before he puts a shotgun to his heart, he holds a rabbit in his arms, just as he has held both the women. At the moment where we find this ridiculous, his body recoils from the gunshot.
In the masterful final scene of the film, pre-pubescent children retell the story as gossip; some say the man survived and went back to the first woman, some that he survived and went back to the second one. It doesn't matter which. The longing of the film's title is not about a man being in love with two women, although it refers to that idea. Rather, this is one of several cherished myths - of a rural utopia, of a passionate affair, of a life-changing decision - which are revisted and subverted through figures who are ordinarily numb, and far removed from the self-dramatizing, overly articulate heroes and heroines of glossy pulp film-making.

New Poetry

2007-07-09T10:52:00.000+01:00

Bella triste 17: Sonderausgabe zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartslyrik: Gedichte, Szenen, Meinungen

This special issue contains poems and poetological reflections by 34 poets writing in German today. It is a wonderful volume of new work (and some new names). There are lines that one memorises, such as Monika Rinck’s ‘du kannst deinen kopf benutzen als eine dritte hand’, and memorable poems such as Uljana Wolf’s two ‘aufwachraum’ poems, as well as statements of poetics, poets’ comments on their colleagues’ poems, and thoughts on the German poetry scene. It’s all good! Buy it whilst it’s available – you’d be hard pressed to put 8 euros to better use!

Die Macht der Sprache

2007-06-18T14:40:00.000+01:00

Das Festival "Die Macht der Sprache" feierte das Deutsche und die kulturelle Vielfalt
Drei Tage, über 60 Veranstaltungen. Das Festival beendete ein zweijähriges internationales Programm, das selbst ein Plädoyer für die Pflege der Mehrsprachigkeit war. Es mündete in ein Manifest, das betonte, wie wichtig die Vielfalt der Sprachen für den Reichtum der Welt und die Bewahrung der jeweiligen Tonart einer Kultur sei. Autoren diskutierten über ihre "literarische Patchwork-Identität". Der Gewinn sprachlicher Vielfalt für die Bildung wurde betont.
Wie geht es nun dem Deutschen? Wird es seinen Platz in der Vielfalt behaupten können? Ein Festivalkreis diskutierte darüber, wie man das Deutsche als Wissenschaftssprache stärken könne, bevor es ganz vom Englischen verdrängt werde. Ziel ist eine Plattform der großen Wissenschaftsorganisationen, um zu erreichen, dass auch bei internationalen Tagungen wieder mehrsprachig diskutiert werde.

Arts disciplines in Germany

2007-05-25T13:47:00.000+01:00

A touching defence of arts and humanities research.

Film Review: Das Leben der Anderen

2007-05-01T13:56:00.000+01:00

The German film Das Leben der Anderen won the best-foreign-language-film Oscar this year. It was directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, came out in 2006, and has recently arrived at British cinemas.
The film focuses on a Stasi man's surveillance of a writer in the GDR. It is mostly set in East Berlin in 1984 and the 'Others' of the title refers to people in the Stasi, as well as to citizens of the East in general. The film opens at the university in Potsdam where the secret policemen were trained. It goes on to show how banally unfulfilling their work could be and that they did not gain materially from their conformism.

The two main characters in the film are Wiesler who writes the Stasi files and Dreymann who writes plays. Three typewriters link their acts of writing: the typewriter Dreymann writes his plays on, the red-ink Western one he is given and hides under the floor, and the typewriter in the attic where Wiesler creates the reports of what he hears from the bugged flat beneath. Distinctions between these instances of writing is increasingly blurred: the record Wiesler makes of the life he is observing becomes an act of creative writing, whereas the creative professional Dreymann turns to journalism in the aftermath of his friend's suicide and the Western Spiegel magazine manipulates his writing into a piece of anti-GDR propaganda. The film does not make clear that the premise of the Spiegel headline - that the GDR had a high suicide rate - deletes the fact that West Berlin had the highest suicide rate in Europe at the time.
References to Brecht in the film highlight the idea that goodness is scarcely possible because of the social system. The apparently good, Dreymann and his actress girlfriend, become compromised morally. We are shown his alienation from Christa-Maria, and the way she drugs herself and betrays him is not outweighed by her remorse. This is a film which represents women as relatively slight and ignoble - a shame in what is otherwise a gripping and thought-provoking portrayal of the human struggle to be 'ein guter Mensch'.
What the film has to say about surveillance seems reassuring: human fallibility prevented men from entirely conforming to the rigours of the GDR secret police. Wiesler, to a Western mind the bad Stasi spook, is shown to do good. Towards the end of the film, we move forward to the time of the Wende and the aftermath of unification, when the files were opened to the public. The whole GDR era covered is fascinating for viewers who never saw it. Yet this is not a film about an entirely exotic society we cannot relate our present society to. The Stasi never survived long enough for the major technological advances in surveillance. Nowadays, surveillance is much more extensive and perhaps there is less room for the human acts of creativity which allowed Wiesler to shield his subject from interrogation.

Lyrikkritik

2007-04-28T16:44:00.000+01:00

An interesting website for new German poetry, poetics and (under 'Autoren') reviews of new poetry collections is lyrikkritik.de. Bravo!

Leipzig Book Fair

2007-03-23T15:50:00.000Z

The Leipzig Book Fair is now on, from 22 to 25 March. Its aim is to enhance publicity for new books. Publishing houses, authors, readers and journalists meet at the event. The Book Fair provides information on new titles as well as current trends in the German-speaking market.

Work in progress

2007-03-07T16:41:00.000Z

a) as author

The Ophelia myth in German culture
- conference paper
- anthology of Ophelia texts with co-authored introduction
- 'The Ophelia Myth in the GDR' (accepted for publication in the Germanic Review September 2007 issue forthcoming soon)
- invited talks at Swansea and Paderborn universities
- research seminar in series on the national and international in German culture

The body in Holocaust poetry (research in progress)

British poets in the GDR poetry magazine Poesiealbum (research in progress)

b) as editor

Kölner Ausgabe der Werke Heinrich Bölls Band 10, herausgegeben von Viktor Böll und Frank Finlay in Zusammenarbeit mit Ruth J. Owen (in press, due 2007)

c) as conference organiser

Hamlet-Reception in European Cultures

The German film that won the best-foreign-language-film Oscar this year

2007-03-03T14:48:00.000Z

Und der Oscar geht nach... Deutschland. Das Drama "Das Leben der Anderen" (2006) von Regisseur Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck hat die begehrte Trophäe für den besten nicht-englischsprachigen Film gewonnen. Zum dritten Mal in der Geschichte des Oscars ist ein deutscher Film mit derbegehrten Trophäe ausgezeichnet worden.

Call for Papers

2007-03-02T16:44:00.000Z

German Poetry, including translation
We welcome 20-minute papers on any period and all aspects of German-language poetry. Send 200-word abstracts (as e-mail attachments) to Geoff Howes, Bowling Green State University (ghowes@bgnet.bgsu.edu) and Jeff Vahlbusch, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (vahlbujb@uwec.edu) by 15 April 2007. The conference is being held in Cleveland, Ohio, in November.

Poetry Translation Prize

2007-01-22T16:31:00.000Z

TRANSLATE A POEM FROM ANY LANGUAGE INTO ENGLISH
The Times Stephen Spender Prize 2007 is up and running! Any British resident or British citizen, of any age, is eligible to enter.There are cash prizes, with all winning entries published in a booklet. The last posting date for entries is Friday 25 May 2007. For details and entry forms go to
www.stephen-spender.org
If you want to read last year´s winning entries visit the website.

Eagleton on Poetry

2006-12-26T14:42:00.000Z

Terry Eagleton's new book How to read a poem (Blackwells, 2007 - although on sale in November 2006!) represents a rare attempt to write a contemporary theory of poetry. Poems have been ignored by Theory in all guises; Theory is in fact 'prose theory', only applicable to cultural products which use prose. A little of what Eagleton asserts is contentious and occasionally wayward (he is confused about what assonance is, apparently), but overall this is a worthwhile book, which pulls together many useful reflections on the forgotten genre.

LCB

2006-11-29T18:09:00.000Z

Freitag, 15. Dezember 2006, 20.00 Uhr
Ein Tunnel über der Spree„Berlin im Text“
Berlin als Lebens- und Arbeitsort: Zu dem Schriftstellertreffen „Tunnel über der Spree“ werden Autorinnen und Autoren eingeladen, die sich an der Spree niedergelassen haben. Warum gerade hier? Und was hat das mit dem Schreiben zu tun? Diesen Fragen gehen die Teilnehmer Jörg-Uwe Albig, Jörg Albrecht, Marica Bodrozic, Michael Ebmeyer, Julia Franck, Christina Griebel, Sarah Khan, Tilman Rammstedt, Gregor Sander, David Wagner und Raul Zelik am 14. und 15. Dezember nicht abstrakt nach, sondern diskutieren über mitgebrachte Texte, in denen Berlin eine wie auch immer geartete Rolle spielt. Im Rahmen der öffentlichen Abendveranstaltung, die heute das Treffen beschließt, präsentieren einige der Teilnehmer neue Texte und berichten über die Diskussionen der vergangenen Tage.
Mehr unter: www.lcb.de

Contemporary German Poetry in Australian Translation

2006-10-30T10:33:00.000Z

Mouth to Mouth: Contemporary German Poetry in Translation, ed. Thomas Wohlfahrt and Tobias Lehmkuhl (Giramondo Publishing)
Whilst I do not condone the reading of poetry translations as a means to the original, this collection is one of the more original ones aimed at those English-speakers incapable of learning German. It had its origins in the Translation Workshop held at the Berlin Poesiefestival in June 2003, when ten German-speaking poets and ten Australian poets translated each other's poems. The selection has been expanded to include the work of fifteen poets from Germany, Switzerland and Austria: Thomas Kling, Kathrin Schmidt, Peter Waterhouse, Kerstin Hensel, Ulf Stolterfoht, Joachim Sartorius, Ursula Krechel, Marcel Beyer, Ulrike Draesner, Nico Bleutge, Sabine Scho, Raphael Urweider, Sabine Naef, Uwe Kolbe and Anja Utler. The translators are Australian poets Luke Davies, Dorothy Porter, Robert Gray, Judith Beveridge, Anthony Lawrence, Gig Ryan, Antigone Kefala, Samuel Wagan Watson, Joanne Burns and Peter Skrzynecki, with European poet-translators Michael Hofmann, Andrew Duncan, Richard Dove, Andrew Shields and Tony Frazer.

Büchnerpreis 2006

2006-10-19T22:05:00.000+01:00

The Büchner-Preisträger for 2006 was announced earlier this year to be Oskar Pastior. The author and translator, from Transylvania, is known for his experimental prose texts and Dada-influenced poetry. The award was to have been presented to him officially on 21st October in Darmstadt, but Pastior passed away on 5th October.
His first poetry collection Offne Worte was published in 1964. During a study visit to Vienna in 1968, Pastior decided not to return to Rumania and from 1969 lived in (West-)Berlin. Among his numerous collections are the volumes Das Hören des Genitivs (1997), Villanella & Pantum (2000) and o du roher iasmin. Gedichte zu Charles Baudelaire (2002). Since 2000 the Hanser Verlag has been producing a Pastior-Werkausgabe.

Poetry and Poetics after Celan

2006-10-13T16:28:00.000+01:00

Department of German, Queen Mary, University of London
POETRY AND POETICS AFTER CELAN
The works of Paul Celan have often been described as a turning point in the history of modern German poetry. In the aftermath of Celan issues like the self-referentiality of poetic language, the politics of poetry, the re-discovery of traditional forms of lyrical expression as well as the emergence of a distinctly poetological poetry have dominated debates on the aesthetics of poetry in Germany, Austria and, to a certain extent, Switzerland since the 1970s. This lecture series attempts to explore the sheer richness of contemporary poetry in the German language and to examine the impact of Celan’s uniquely challenging legacy.
24.10.2006 Leonard M Olschner (QMUL): Celans poetologisches Verstummen und Weiter-Sprechen.
5.12.2006 Katrin Kohl (Oxford): "Nach Celan"? - Die Bedeutung Celans für die Geschichte deutschsprachiger Lyrik und Poetik.
16.1.2007 Ryozo Maeda (Tokyo/Berlin): Rätsel und Evidenz: Celan in der medialen Kommunikation heute.
23.1.2007 Karen Leeder (Oxford): Ästhetik der Kälte: epistemological experiment in contemporary German poetry.
6.2.2007 Markus May (Erlangen) :Politik der Paronomasie. Kritische Potentiale sprachspielerischer Dichtung seit Celan.
27.2.2007 Vivian Liska (Antwerpen): Am Schweigen vorbei. Beispiele einer Poetik nach Celan.
20.3.2007 Sandra Pott (KCL): “Arkadien für alle”. Über den Lyriker Durs Grünbein.
8.5.2007 Konstanze Fliedl (Salzburg): Escher-Intarsien. Intertextualität bei Friederike Mayröcker.
22.5.2007 Rüdiger Görner (QMUL): Im Innern der Gedichte. Bemerkungen zum poetischen Prozess am Beispiel von Nicolas Born.

Brecht Events in London

2006-10-11T16:25:00.000+01:00

As part of the Poetry International Festival this Autumn at the South Bank Centre, in the year which is the fiftieth anniversary of Brecht’s death, seven leading German and English poets have been invited to respond to the great German poet.
On Friday 27th October at 7.45 pm in the Purcell Room David Constantine, Andy Croft, Ulrike Draesner, Lavinia Greenlaw, Adrian Mitchell, Albert Ostermaier & Bert Papenfuss will read specially commissioned new ‘translations’ of Brecht. These are translations in the broadest sense: from new versions of classic poems, to original responses to his life and work, and reinterpretations of his personal, poetic and political gestures for our own times. This will be preceded, at 5.45 pm in the Purcell Room, by a discussion with the poets on ‘Brecht’s Poetic Legacy’, chaired by Dr Karen Leeder.

Current academic post

2006-10-01T11:31:00.000+01:00

This is Jesus College, Oxford, where I teach German language and literature.

Berlin

2006-09-05T16:21:00.000+01:00

The literature festival opened in Berlin today. Among the poets reading there are Ulla Hahn, Michael Krüger, Oskar Pastior, Gerhard Rühm, and Lutz Seiler.

Günter Grass and the SS

2006-08-15T15:58:00.000+01:00

The German poet, the SS, erstwhile silence, late revelations, the usual story when it comes to postwar German writers and their entanglements with politics. He was wrong to join the Waffen-SS, wrong to 'forget' the fact whilst propagating an ethics of remembrance, but if there were a revolution here tomorrow, how would you look upon your current conformism? To survive materially, we collaborate sooner or later with a system we more or less know to be immoral. In the end, moral awareness makes hypocrites of us all.

Brinkmann Film

2006-08-14T17:57:00.000+01:00

This summer, the film Brinkmanns Zorn came out, based on the life and last project of the German poet Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, who died at the age of 35 in an RTA in London, in 1975. He left behind a voluminous, unfinished work-in-progress that included many hours of documentary film, audio recordings and photographs. The film incorporates portions of this existing material.
Just a few weeks after his death, Brinkmann's parameter-expanding collection Westwärts 1 & 2 appeared. During his lifetime, Brinkmann published nine other poetry collections and two anthologies of contemporary American poetry translated into German. His critical deconstruction of contemporary culture remains important in postmodern literature.

Aldeburgh Poetry Festival

2006-08-11T16:19:00.000+01:00

The Poetry Trust is an arts organisation which runs the UK's leading annual festival of international contemporary poetry at Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast. The 18th Aldeburgh Poetry Festival takes place 3 – 5 November 2006. Amongst all the English-language poetry on show, German poetry will get a look in, albeit in translation: Durs Grünbein's Ashes for Breakfast (Faber 2005), his first book of poems in English translation, will be given its UK launched at the Festival. It offers a selection of poems from five of the German collections, translated by Michael Hoffmann.

Literaturwerkstatt Berlin

2006-08-08T16:17:00.000+01:00

Die Literaturwerkstatt Berlin ist Begegnungsstätte von Autorinnen und Autoren mit ihrem deutschen Publikum. Besondere Schwerpunkte ihres Arbeitens liegen in der Entdeckung und Förderung des schriftstellerischen Nachwuchses und in der Verbreitung von Poesie. Die Literaturwerkstatt ist ein Ort moderner, publikumsorientierter, lustvoller Literaturvermittlung mit einem breit gefächerten Angebot: Autorenlesungen und Diskussionen, thematische Reihen, Kolloquien, Literaturevents. Die Literaturwerkstatt veranstaltet das "Poesiefestival Berlin", "Weltklang - Nacht der Poesie" auf dem Potsdamer Platz und "Zebra", die Biennale des Poesiefilms. Die Lyrik, weitgehend ausgeblendet aus der Buchproduktion, hat in der Literaturwerkstatt einen Ort ihrer Wertschätzung, Pflege und Verbreitung gefunden. Seit 1999 betreibt sie die Internet-Plattform für Gedichte unter www.lyrikline.org.

Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, Knaackstraße 97 (Kulturbrauerei), 10435 Berlin

Gottfried Benn: Ausstellung

2006-07-07T15:53:00.000+01:00

Benns Doppelleben oder Wie man sich selbst zusammensetzt
Wechselausstellung im Literaturmuseum der Moderne
Freitag, 7. Juli, bis Sonntag, 27. August 2006
»Unser Kulturkreis begann mit Doppelgestalten. Sphinxen, Zentauren, hundsköpfigen Göttern, und befindet sich mit uns in einer Kulmination von Doppelleben: wir denken etwas anderes als wir sind.«
Das Marbacher Archiv, das den Nachlass von Gottfried Benn besitzt, nähert sich zum 50. Todestag am 7. Juli 2006 dessen vielgestaltigen Doppelgesichtern von unterschiedlichen Seiten. Wie arbeitet Benn, wenn er sein eigenes Leben beschreibt? Was gibt er in seinem Doppelleben preis, und was verheimlichte er? Entsteht ein Leben überhaupt erst, wenn man es beschreibt? Ist man ein Ich erst, wenn man sich zusammensetzt? Die Ausstellung konzentriert sich auf den Werdegang von Benns Autobiografie und ihre Herkunft aus einer Dichterwerkstatt, in der mit Schere und Klebstoff und nicht nur mit Kuli und Schreibmaschine gearbeitet wurde.

Literaturportal

2006-06-15T14:27:00.000+01:00

Heute wird das »Literaturportal«, die erste zentrale Internetplattform für das literarische Leben, auf einer Pressekonferenz in Berlin freigeschalten.
Das »Literaturportal« wurde vom Deutschen Literaturarchiv Marbach erdacht und errichtet. Literaturinteressierte können sich über Autorenlesungen und Veranstaltungen in ganz Deutschland informieren, 500 Kurzbiografien wichtiger deutschsprachiger Autorinnen und Autoren abrufen und Ausschnitte aus rund 30 Autorenlesungen online hören. Alle Termine, die im »Literaturportal« erscheinen, werden anschließend archiviert; auf diese Weise entsteht rückblickend ein umfassendes Bild des literarischen Lebens in Deutschland.

Peter Waterhouse

2006-06-13T16:08:00.000+01:00

Poet and UEA Visiting Professor, Dr Peter Waterhouse, will be giving the third of his Leverhulme lectures on Tuesday 13th June, 5-7pm, Arts 0.14, on the subject Between the lines: Living between languages. Much of the lecture will be concerned with Michael Hamburger, 7 volumes of whose poetry Peter Waterhouse has translated. The final lecture in this session will be a reading from Peter Waterhouse's latest book, on 7th July, 5-7pm. All welcome.
School of Literature and Creative Writing
University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ

Vortrag in Marbach

2006-06-05T10:22:00.000+01:00

Heute wird das neue Literaturmuseum in Marbach eröffnet. Seine spektakuläre Präsentation kehrt das Verhältnis von Werk und Manuskript um.

AUTOREN ZEIGEN AUTOREN:

DURS GRÜNBEIN ZEIGT RILKES »KARUSSELL«

21.06.2006

20 Uhr
Literaturmuseum der Moderne

Schillerhöhe 10, 71672 Marbach am Neckar

Was kann an einem Archivstück in den Blick fallen? Welche Risse tun sich auf, welche Rhizome treten hervor, wenn ein Betrachter zu deuten sucht, was er sieht? Der Dichter Durs Grünbein exponiert Rilkes Gedicht, das in der Dauerausstellung des LiMo zu sehen ist, aus seiner Sicht.

POET: WOLF BIERMANN

2006-05-26T11:16:00.000+01:00

The poetry collections

Die Drahtharfe: Balladen, Gedichte, Lieder. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1965.
Mit Marx- und Engelszungen: Gedichte, Balladen, Lieder. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1968. (New edition Munich: DTV, 2000)
Für meine Genossen: Hetzlieder, Gedichte, Balladen. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1972.
Preussischer Ikarus: Lieder, Balladen, Gedichte, Prosa. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1978.
Verdrehte Welt - das seh' ich gerne: Lieder, Balladen, Gedichte, Prosa. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1982.
Affenfels und Barrikade: Gedichte, Lieder, Balladen. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1986.
Alle Lieder. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1990.
Alle Gedichte. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1995.

See also German public intellectual rankings

Magazine for poetry and poetics

2006-05-23T16:50:00.000+01:00

"Zwischen den Zeilen has become essential reading for anyone who wants to know what's going on at the cutting edge of German poetry."
"ZdZ is tough stuff, but every issue has material to both delight and astonish." (Both quotations are from www.shearsman.com)

Zwischen den Zeilen is a magazine for poetry and poetics, edited by Urs Engeler. The first issue came out in 1992 with contributions from Durs Grünbein and Kerstin Hensel. The 25th issue, out this month, focuses on the poetry and poetics of the youngest literary generation, born between 1970 and 1981. Ron Winkler, for instance, offers the following poetological reflections: "Ich kann auch ein wenig bekanntes Goethe-Gedicht nehmen, die Abhandlungen dazu, Goethes Biografie dazu, daraus ein Instantinsidergedicht basteln und dann sagen: Ich stelle mich auch mal in die Tradition Goethes, auch ich führe die Traditionslinie noch weiter, auch ich leuchte einen neuen Aspekt seines Werkes aus; ich nachdichte Goethes am wenigsten bekannte Gedicht adäquat in die Gegenwart. Ich mache die Hommage per Zitat. Ja, auch ich kann Mauerblümchen auf die Traditionslinien der Poesie handwerken. Auch ich kann erklären, ich setze mich bewusst mit der Tradition der Poesie auseinander und halte sie durch meine Auseinandersetzung mit ihr am Leben."

On the rationale behind German studies at British universities

2006-05-20T17:02:00.000+01:00

"The culture of the German-speaking countries is exceptionally rich and vibrant. German-speaking writers, thinkers and artists have long been and continue to be at the forefront of intellectual life." (Oxford University's perspective)
"Speakers of German are the largest linguistic group in the European Union and have played a central role in European history and culture for nearly two thousand years. Germany's geographical position has made it a natural mediator between east and west, north and south, and in the periods of Reformation, Romanticism and Modernism, German literature, art and music have seen the birth of movements which continue to shape the intellectual world we live in today. " (Cambridge University's perspective)
"With the re-emergence of Berlin as one of the leading world capitals, Germany’s pivotal role within the European Union, its status as the third largest economy in the world and the growing importance of German in the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe, there has never been a better time to study German." (Leeds University's perspective)
"From the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 back to the teachings of Luther, the writing of Goethe and Thomas Mann, and the theories of Marx and Nietzsche, Germany and the German-speaking tradition have occupied a central place in Europe and the world. " (University College London's perspective)

POET: MARCEL BEYER

2006-05-18T09:54:00.000+01:00

The poetry collections

Kleine Zahnpasta: Poems 1987-1989. Paris: dead language press, 1989.
Walkmännin: Poems 1988/89. Frankfurt a.M.: Patio, 1991.
Brauwolke: Gedichte. Berlin: Warnke, 1994.
Falsches Futter: Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997.
Erdkunde: Gedichte. Cologne: DuMont, 2002.

POET: BERT PAPENFUSS

2006-05-14T11:40:00.000+01:00

The poetry collections

Vorwärts im Zorn usw: Gedichte. Berlin & Weimar: Aufbau, 1990.
SOJA. Berlin: Galrev, 1990.
Led Saudaus: Notdichtung, Karrendichtung. Berlin: Janus, 1991.
NUNFT FKK / IM endart novemberklub. Göttingen: Steidl, 1992.
NAIV, TILL, HARM [Die ersten drei Lieferungen der Gesamtausgabe]. Berlin: Janus, 1993.
TrakTat zum Aber : Gedichte 1981-1984. Berlin: Janus, 1996.
dreizehntanz : Gedichte. Berlin & Weimar: Aufbau, 1988.
mors ex nihilo: Ein Poem in 3 Teilen und 484 Versen. Berlin: Galrev, 1994.
tiské. Göttingen: Steidl, 1994.
SBZ: Land und Leute. Berlin: Galrev, 1998.
Hetze: Gedichte 1994 bis 1998. Berlin: Janus, 1998.
Rumbalotte. Gedichte 1998-2002. Basel: Engeler, 2005.

POET: HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER

2006-05-08T15:04:00.000+01:00

The poetry collections
(all Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp)

verteidigung der wölfe: Gedichte. 1957
landessprache: Gedichte. 1960
blindenschrift: Gedichte. 1964
Mausoleum:37 Balladen aus der Geschichte des Fortschritts. 1975
Der Untergang der Titanic: Versepos. 1978
Die Furie des Verschwindens: Gedichte. 1980
Zukunftsmusik: Gedichte. 1991
Kiosk: Neue Gedichte. 1995
Leichter als Luft: Moralische Gedichte. 1999

See also Poetological ideas

Lyric beginnings

2006-05-04T10:56:00.000+01:00

Examples of a convention: the ‘Wo bin ich?’ lyric opening
1. Angelus Silesius (1624-1677), ‘Der verdammte Übeltäter’:
Ach weh, wo bin ich nun? bei lauter höllschen Mohren,
Bei teuflischem Gesind, in Leviathans Schlund [...]
2. Michael Denis (1729-1800), ‘Rhingulphs Lied’:
Wo bin ich? - Schlief ich nicht im Walde
Arbeitermüdet ein? [...]
3. Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), ‘Die Muthmassung’:
Wo bin ich? wie! wo schlief ich dann,
Die dunkle Nacht hindurch?
Hier lieg ich unter diesem Baum,
Hier ich, mein Becher - - dort im Gras,
Dort liegt mein Kranz, die Flöte da,
Bald glaub ich, daß ich gestern hier,
Im starken Rausche sank.
4. Andreas Gryphius, ‘Ewige Frewde der Außerwehlten’:
O! wo bin ich! O was seh' ich! wach ich! treumt mir? wie wird mir
IESV! welcher wollust Meer/ überschwemmt mein frölich Hertz [...]
5. Herder, ‘Eine Elegie’:
Wo bin ich? - In Einsiedeleien
Find' ich mich!
Gespenster schatteten weg, Gedankentiefen
Brausen herab und ruhn! [...]

Goethe & Schiller

2006-05-03T10:14:00.000+01:00

Radio 4 on Goethe

Goethe on writing poetry

Poems on figures from Greek myth

Lieder settings of poems by Goethe and Schiller

Schillerjahr 2005 and Schiller's aesthetics

Trakl workshop in London

2006-04-29T10:29:00.000+01:00

Rediscovering Georg Trakl
19 May 2006 at the Austrian Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, London
WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
11.00 Welcome from Johannes Wimmer, Director, Austrian Cultural Forum
11.15 Alexander Stillmark: Problems of Principle and Practice facing the Translator of Trakl
12.00 Robert Vilain: Trakl and the Symbolists
13.15 Andrew Webber: Eventidings: Georg Trakl and Else Lasker-Schüler
15.00 Will Stone: A Visionary Infection - Georg Trakl's Dream and Derangement
15.45 Simon Thomas: Blaubart's Bloody Blues: Trakl's Mythopoetics of Evil
17.00 Rüdiger Görner: Farbintervall und Wortverschattung. Versuch über Trakl
EVENING PROGRAMME
18.30 Trakl in Performance: Simon Thomas presents his new translations and adaptations of Trakl's plays, Maria Magdalena and Barrabas, his poems and letters. Cast includes Tom Frankland and Stephenjohn Holgate. Directed by Ruth Martin.
All are welcome to attend. Registration for both the Workshop and Evening Programme required by 12 May - please contact jane.lewin@sas.ac.uk

20 years ago today

2006-04-26T09:51:00.000+01:00

Am 26. April 1986 ereignete sich in der Stadt Prypjat, Ukraine (damals: Sowjetunion) eine katastrophale Kernschmelze und Explosion im Kernreaktor Tschornobyl Block 4. Der Hergang des Unfalls ist bis heute nicht zweifelsfrei geklärt. Er gilt als die zweitschwerste nukleare Havarie und war eine der größten Umweltkatastrophen überhaupt. Bekannt ist diese Katastrophe unter dem russischen Namen der Nachbarstadt Tschernobyl, da Russisch zum Zeitpunkt der Katastrophe Hauptamtssprache war.
The effects of Chernobyl have been represented by various European writers, including the poet Mario Petrucci (See Half Life: poems for Chernobyl Heaventree Press, 2004 and Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl Enitharmon Press, 2004); in German literature and film, this includes Christa Wolf's story Störfall (1987) and Achim von Borries's film England! (1999/2000).

Goethe on Radio 4

2006-04-06T15:11:00.000+01:00

The topic of this morning's 'In Our Time' programme was Goethe. Three guests and the presenter sought to make accessible comment on Goethe’s life and literary work by means of a chronological sweep. Goethe was presented as a founder of German culture, casting off the dominance of French culture. His grounding in the Lutheran Bible was mentioned at the outset and picked up in identifying Götz von Berlichingen and later Faust as set in the time of Luther. The programme gave attention to Goethe as a young Sturm und Drang playwright in revolt against stuffy French classicism, as a novelist disappointed that readers of Werther misunderstood his critique of the cult of sensibility, and as a would-be reformist privy councillor corrupted by power. The discussion traced Goethe's course from birth in Frankfurt with a silver spoon in his mouth, to little Weimar with its Court, and then to Italy, prompted by a German yearning for the South. Goethe’s relationships with women were described, particularly that with Charlotte von Stein, which led to one contributor's wayward assertion that whether Goethe and Charlotte had a sexual relationship is “one of the great questions which German studies battles with”. I think not. Even within the confines of this programme, it was clear that Adelheid and Gretchen are of greater interest than Charlotte and Christiane. The discussion did, however, highlight the politics in his plays: anti-class in Werther, anti-war in Egmont, anti-male politics/rhetoric in Iphigenia, and the mutual appreciation between Goethe and Napoleon. That Goethe had the observing eye of both a scientist and a poet was stated in the introduction, but sadly this idea was not pursued.

German public intellectual rankings

2006-04-03T13:53:00.000+01:00

The political magazine Cicero has ranked the top public intellectuals in Germany. The methodology apparently involved measuring presence in the 83 most important German-language newspapers and magazines, as well as taking into account Internet and TV mentions. The top ten includes many elderly authors and nos. 1 and 7 are even poets (although primarily labelled a novelist and a song-writer of course):
1 Günter Grass
2 Harald Schmidt
3 Marcel Reich-Ranicki
4 Martin Walser
5 Peter Handke
6 Jürgen Habermas
7 Wolf Biermann
8 Elfriede Jelinek
9 Alice Schwarzer
10 Botho Stauß

Poetry after Brecht

2006-03-30T17:02:00.000+01:00

New Book
O CHICAGO! O WIDERSPRUCH! Hundert Gedichte auf Brecht
eds. Karen Leeder und Erdmut Wizisla (Transit Verlag, 2006)

Many major writers, from Brecht's own era to the present day, have written about him or to him - and have done so, above all, in lyric form. The editors of this anthology, experts in both Brecht's work and the literature of the twentieth century, have selected poems by a cross-section of poets - from Paul Celan and Kurt Tucholsky, to Robert Gernhardt, Heiner Müller and Volker Braun. They have also commissioned poems to Brecht from contemporary poets such as Durs Grünbein, Ulrike Draesner, Bert Papenfuß, Günter Kunert and Friederike Mayröcker.

FILM REVIEW: Halbe Treppe

2006-03-29T16:07:00.000+01:00

Halbe Treppe is set in the 'other' Frankfurt, at Germany's border with Poland, in half-light and gloom. The city is portrayed as an utterly unexceptional place, where people pass petty lives in routine hopelessness. There is no social deprivation or tragedy, but the two couples pursue ordinary meaningless existences as employees and consumers. Amid the resignation, the four characters mouth clichés to reassure themselves. They display no self-awareness at all. The ironies of the soubriquet “Magic Chris”, of the raw meat in the bath, of the world map on the kitchen wall, pass them by. They are the opposite of the thinking people of similar ages in, say, the 2004 film Before sunset. In Halbe Treppe, the new millennium in the new Germany has brought a life devoid of dynamics. The film bumps between fly-on-the-wall technique and scenes in which characters address the film-maker; the pace is always slow and over-extended. The escape of Uwe and Ellen’s budgie, mentioned when Ellen first has sex with Chris in the back of the car, ironises any notion of Ellen as another Nora, the 'little bird' who will fly free.
Further info.

Lyrik Kabinett

2006-03-22T17:17:00.000Z

Founded in 1989 as the first German poetry library, the Lyrik Kabinett is based in Munich and located in the Institute of Comparative Literature at the University of Munich. Its collection of 20,000 volumes is being expanded systematically.
The Lyrik Kabinett regularly puts on poetry readings (around 36 a year) and annually publishes a book featuring a special poet or poems it wants to recommend to readers of German poetry.
About half of the poetry readings are given by contemporary poets, the other half involve readings from the work of dead poets. Likewise, the readings are divided equally between poets writing in German and those writing in other languages (diese immer auch in der Originalsprache).
The poetry library is a public, non-lending library. The collection comprises poetry from all eras in German. Poetry in other languages is also collected in the original and in translation, as well as 'Künstlerbücher' incorporating poetry. The website gives details of access and events.

Recommended Poetry Sites

2006-03-21T17:38:00.000Z

Lyrikkritik

Poetry scene news online

Poetics online

Literaturportal

Munich poetry library

Marbach archive for literature

Contemporary poetics research centre

Literaturwerkstatt Berlin

Project: Poesie der Stadt

Project: Neuedichte

American poetry

Europe's forgotten places

2006-03-20T13:35:00.000Z

The project Last & Lost: Unterwegs durch ein verschwindendes Europa reminds me of the many images of wastelands and untenanted buildings in German poetry since 1990. It suggests that the preoccupation with peripheries and border regions, which marked poetry from the 1980s, became part of a wider, European awareness of sites left behind after history has moved on. The project is a joint enterprise of the Literaturhaus München, the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB), the Suhrkamp Verlag and the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, and includes an exhibition, a symposium and a festival.

(Renate Niebler, aus der Serie Maxhütte – Industriekultur in der Oberpfalz, 2004)

"Europa verändert sein Gesicht. Orte und Landschaften werden verlassen, sie verfallen oder verschwinden ganz. Wer sie wieder betritt, findet einstürzende Kirchen, verlassene Bahnhöfe, überwachsene Bunkeranlagen, leere Schwimmbecken. Er mag über den abblätternden Putz alter Häuser streichen oder Vorschriften entziffern, die niemandem mehr Weisung erteilen. Ein merkwürdiger Zauber geht von diesen Orten in den Peripherien und Grenzregionen Europas aus."

LITERATURHAUS MÜNCHEN Ausstellung vom 23. März bis 30. April 2006: Last & Lost. Bilder eines verschwindenden Europas
LITERARISCHES COLLOQUIUM BERLIN Symposion am 23. und 24. März 2006: Last & Lost. Literatur und Topographie
VOLKSBÜHNE AM ROSA-LUXEMBURG-PLATZ IN BERLIN Festival vom 24. bis 26. März 2006: Last & Lost. Ansichten eines verschwindenden Europas

POET: ALBERT OSTERMAIER

2006-03-13T17:05:00.000Z

The poetry collections
(all Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp)

Solarplexus: Gedichte. 2004.
Autokino: Gedichte. 2001.
Heartcore: Gedichte. 1999.
Fremdkörper hautnah. Gedichte. 1997.
Herz Vers Sagen. Gedichte. 1995.
Nicht in Venedig. 1991.

Poetry Scene News

2006-03-11T11:33:00.000Z

Poetry scene news is a well-judged digest, provided by the South Bank Centre in London, from a predominantly UK perspective, but with some awareness of the wider world's poetry.

Dreamlives

2006-03-07T15:32:00.000Z

DREAMLIVES is a fully staged and dramatised recital of late romantic Lieder (Strauss, Berg and early Schoenberg), performed in German. It is a dark cabaret exploring the impact of Freud's ideas about dreams, sexuality and the unconscious mind on the music of his contemporaries. It is presented, partly, as a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Freud's birth this year.
DREAMLIVES is performed by the soprano Julia Sporsen (Royal Academy of Music) and pianist Sergey Rybin (a former professor of piano at Moscow State University). It is directed by the actor Sebastian Harcombe (RSC and National Theatre) in an evocative Klimt-inspired setting by Miriam Nabarro (St Martin's School of Art). The performances will take place on 7th, 8th, 14th and 15th of May at 8pm, sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum in London and the Jewish Music Institute.
DREAMLIVES is produced by LIEDERKREIS, a new company formed specifically to explore the Lieder and Art Song repertoire in more dramatic ways, by bringing together creative artists from the worlds of classical music and theatre. Further details can be found at: www.liederkreis.co.uk

World Book Day

2006-03-02T15:24:00.000Z

World Book Day was designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and was marked in over 30 countries around the globe last year. The origins of the day we now celebrate come from Catalonia, where roses and books were given as gifts to loved ones on St. George's Day − a tradition started some 80 years ago. World Book Day 2006 in the UK and Ireland is taking place today, on Thursday 2nd March. It is a partnership of publishers, booksellers and interested parties who work together to promote books and reading for the personal enrichment and enjoyment of all. Most other countries hold World Book Day on 23rd April every year.

Ophelia

2006-02-20T16:30:00.000Z

In connection with my current work on Ophelia poems in German, I have been looking at Ophelia webpages. Here are some of the less silly ones:
Essays with abstracts, on Shakespeare's Ophelia
The Ophelia Page, part of a 'gender, literature and art' project
The Tate's Ophelia by Millais
Ophelia images by painter, 1775-1926
'Ophelia: Victimised Woman or Femme fatale?'
Speech by Margaret Atwood from 1997
Essay in German on Huchel's Ophelia poem

Heine

2006-02-17T16:09:00.000Z

Zum 150. Todestag eines der berühmtesten deutschen Dichter ist national und international das Heine-Jahr ausgerufen.

Gossip

2006-02-14T16:10:00.000Z

The prime minister's aide Alastair Campbell dined here at College on Friday night and when asked what German literature he recalled from his undergraduate studies, he replied: Hölderlin! Specifically 'Empedokles'. And then Schiller. Wonderful!

Modern Poetry in Translation

2006-02-10T16:16:00.000Z

'Poetry is less and less a prisoner of its own language . . . it is a universal language of understanding, coherent behind the many languages, in which we can all hope to meet.' (Ted Hughes)

On the aims and heritage of the series Modern Poetry in Translation, David Constantine has written: 'The hallmark of our age seems to be instability and ferment, the voluntary and enforced movement of large numbers of people, over Europe and worldwide. People moving with their languages. In that context translation must matter more and more. We shall look for the poets who are capable of telling us what life is like now with so much in flux and underway for good or ill. We shall try to give access to voices that need it and merit it. Poetry and translation will be in alliance, to that end. And we believe, like Hughes and Weissbort in the 1960s, that the shock of the foreign is vitally necessary to poets whose mother tongue is English. In Britain we risk becoming parochial and, indeed, xenophobic, step by step with the march of English towards supremacy among the languages of the world. The notion that everybody speaks English, or ought to, damages us even more than it insults everyone else.'

Rilke

2006-02-09T16:32:00.000Z

Rilke seminar series

Rilke in translation

Berlinale

2006-02-07T12:09:00.000Z

This week the 56th Berlin film festival opens. The films being shown include 55 German productions. In the last ten years German films have garnered growing recognition internationally: Fatih Akin's film Gegen die Wand received many accolades for example, after it won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2004; shortly after that Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei was in the running at Cannes; finally, Marc Rothemund's film Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage was nominated for an Oscar. There are a number of reasons for the rise of German film since the Wende. Young filmmakers like Akin, Andreas Dresen oder Oskar Roehler are the first generation of filmmakers to have grown up with both Hollywood and television as influences; they often move between different cultures, and they have been able to develop their own style, without being overshadowed by forefathers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Volker Schlöndorff and Werner Herzog. Perhaps the Filmförderungsgesetz of 2003, which rewards box office success but also presence at film festivals, has been a minor factor. 76 German contributions were entered for the Berlinale competition. The four selected to compete are Elementarteilchen by Oskar Roehler, Requiem by Hans-Christian Schmid, Der freie Wille by Matthias Glasner and Sehnsucht by Valeska Grisebach.

Rilke Seminar Series

2006-01-20T12:04:00.000Z

Oxford Rilke Seminars - Hilary Term

Tuesday evenings at 5.30 pm in Christ Church, Oxford

1st week - 17 January
Judith Ryan (Harvard University) The Problem of Completeness in Rilke's Late Poetry [A paper glancing at the poems 'Mausoleum', 'Idol' and 'Gong', freighted with asides and facile references to orientalism. Failed to develop 'completeness' as an idea beyond trivia about Entstehungsgeschichten.]

2nd week - 24 January
Katrin Kohl (Jesus College, Oxford) The Poetic Dialogue between Rilke and Erika Mitterer [Groundbreaking paper offering fruitful approach to the epistolary poem sequence as a form of dialogue. Fascinating examination of the false boundaries erected between reality and the imaginary; of the poet as reader; and of the dialogue's destabilising of 'du' and 'ich' identities.]

3rd week - 31 January
Marielle Sutherland (Oxford Brookes University) The Sound and Silence of the Text of Death: Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus [Neverending paper looping between too many isolated lines of verse and some platitudinous poetics, which in any case apply to most poetry rather than Rilke's sonnets specifically.]

4th week - 7 February
Charlie Louth (The Queen's College, Oxford) Versions of Pastoral in Late Rilke [A reverent presentation of Rilke's Georgics, especially 'Das kleine Weinjahr' and the poetological fragment 'Von meiner Antwort weiss ich noch nicht / wann ich sie sagen werde./ Aber, horch eine Harke, die schon schafft. / Oben allein in dem Weinberg spricht / schon ein Mann mit der Erde'. ]

5th week - 14 February
Helen Bridge (University of Exeter) The Problem of Abstraction: Rilke's Late Poetry and Modern Visual Art [An interesting analysis of a gulf between the aesthetic of Rilke's late poetry and the ideas he expressed in letters at the time about modern art. Using Klee as the primary point of reference, the poems 'Die Frucht', and Sonette an Orpheus I,11 and I, 12 were read as negotiations of modernist abstraction. ]

6th week - 21 February
Ben Hutchinson (St John's, Oxford / Marbach am Neckar) 'Ankunft': A Late Poem, or an Early Preoccupation [A reading scarcely touching base with the text as a whole and rendering the 1926 poem an exercise in revisiting symbols established in Rilke's early work.]

7th week - 28 February
Leonard Olschner (Queen Mary, University of London) Interior Landscapes in Rilke's Late Poetry [A more accurate title would have been 'Poets and intellectuals at the time of Rilke's late poetry', of which this was a rich survey.]

8th week - 7 March
Naomi Segal (Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London) 'O dieses ist das Tier, das es nicht gibt': Unicorns in Early and Late Rilke [Reading Malte reading the tapestries of the maidens with the unicorn, alongside the two Rilke poems]

News from the L.C.B.

2006-01-11T11:05:00.000Z

SPRACHE IM TECHNISCHEN ZEITALTER, HEFT 176

Zum ersten Mal war im letzten Dezember unser Schriftstellertreffen „Tunnel über der Spree“ ganz der Lyrik gewidmet, und so reisten 14 Autoren aus Deutschland und der Schweiz an, um ihre in Arbeit befindlichen Gedichte zur Diskussion zur stellen. Die aktuelle Ausgabe versammelt Gedichte der eingeladenen Dichter, und so entsteht, ganz en passant, eine kleine Anthologie zur Lyrik der Jetztzeit. Angereichert wird diese durch die Laudatio von Hans Jürgen Balmes auf Daniel Falb, den diesjährigen Lyrikdebütpreisträger des LCB und des kunstraums sylt:quelle einerseits, und durch Gedichte aus dem anglo-amerikanischen Raum andererseits.

Women and Death: Oxford Colloquium

2006-01-07T17:03:00.000Z

5-8 January 2006, Trinity College, Oxford
Hosted by Prof Helen Watanabe and Prof Sarah Colvin

Pamela Sue Anderson on Death and/as Woman in Philosophy
Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg on Medieveal Women Saints
Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood on Iphigeneia in Ancient Greece
Anna Linton on Iphigeneia and Jephthah's Daughter in Literature
Gesa Dane on Loss of Honour as a cause of death
Nicholas Saul on Women suicides from Lucinde to Wally
Ruth J. Owen on Ophelia Poems
Jürgen Barkhoff on Vampires in Hoffmann
Ben Morgan on Zombies in Jelinek
Stefanie Knöll on Death and the Maiden in art
Uta Kornmeier on Waxworks
Anna Richards on Grief and gender in the 18th century
Gisela Ecker on Requiems by Kaschnitz and Mayröcker

This colloquium is part of an ongoing AHRB project on Representations of Women and Death in German Literature and Art after 1500

Poetry and Change

2006-01-05T12:42:00.000Z

Amidst life-altering events and shifts, poetry is well placed as a genre because of its immediacy. The way poetry has of setting our internal house in order, of formalizing emotion difficult to articulate, is one of the reasons we still depend on it in moments of crisis and during those times when it is important to know, in so many words, what we are going through.
The poem is able to capture the very first responses to change, as well as later, more considered ones. In his ‘Lebenslinie’ lecture on poetry for example, Günter Kunert looked back at his own poems and identified their ‘Zeitabhängigkeit’. He argued that poetry is essentially the poet’s reaction to the times. The poem can also seem to shift of its own accord, however. The passage of time alters the way an extant poem is read, so that its words seem to have different referents as history unfolds.
German history of the 20th century is full of discontinuities, radical breaks and fresh starts, which have been negotiated by poetry. Many poems in a period of historic change reflect a renewed sensitivity to questions of history and genre. The German poet Heinz Czechowski’s 1990 poem ‘Festtage’, for example, identifies the Eastern European revolution of 1989 with a clash between poetry and prose. In this poem, the generic opposition between the prosaic and the lyrical is a clash between the realistic and the utopian, between the commercial imperative of the West and ‘unsere Träume’.

See also Memory Traces

Interactions between poetry and other arts

2006-01-02T15:21:00.000Z

Poetry and Painting: Europe after the rain

Poetry and Music: Lieder

Conference: Interactions

Recording of Bachmann

2005-12-13T11:49:00.000Z

Hear Ingeborg Bachmann reading her poem 'Dunkles zu sagen' from her collection Die gestundete Zeit. (You will need Real Player).

Oxford

2005-12-11T17:35:00.000Z

I am a stipendiary lecturer at three Oxford colleges. I teach German language and literature for the university courses below, as well as giving some faculty lectures.

First-year courses
·II – Translations from and into German
·III – Literary commentary (on poems and prose)
·IV – Literature 1890-1930
Second-year courses
·Translation studies (theory and practice)
·VIII – Literature 1730-1890 (each student selects four topics which would typically cover 20-25 primary texts; on this course I teach 10 topics)
·X – Special authors (each student selects two major authors to study in depth; on this course I teach the works of the following: Rilke, Kafka, Brecht, Grass, Wolf)
Final-year courses
·II – Translation from German
·VIII – Literature 1890-2000 (each student selects four topics which would typically cover 20-25 primary texts; on this course I teach 12 topics)

This is the building where my office is located.

Lectures

2005-12-03T18:49:00.000Z

German Poetry in the 20th Century
Lecture series at the University of Oxford
Hilary term 2006

Weeks 1,3,5,7, at the Taylorian, Mondays at 12 noon

1. Expressionist poetry
2. Poetry in the aftermath of WW2
3. East German poetry
4. Poetry of Unification

Winter in Berlin

2005-12-02T16:10:00.000Z

Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, Knaackstraße 97 (Kulturbrauerei), 10435 Berlin

7 Dezember 2005, 20 Uhr

Von Preisen und ihren Trägern

Die Lyrikpreisträger Michael Donhauser (Ernst-Jandl-Preis), Daniel Falb(Lyrik-Debüt-Preis), Yaak Karsunke (Erich-Fried-Preis), Christian Schloyer (openmike), Jan Wagner (Ernst Meister Preis für Lyrik), Ron Winkler(Leonce-und-Lena-Preis) und ihre Texte werden vorgestellt. Ein großes Fest der Poesie, ein Fest für eine Kunst, die Aufmerksamkeit mehr als verdient.

Georg Heym in translation

2005-11-26T10:13:00.000Z

Review of Poems by Georg Heym, translated by Antony Hasler (2005).

Recordings

2005-11-25T11:59:00.000Z

Ingeborg Bachmann

Paul Celan

Recording of Celan

2005-11-24T11:01:00.000Z

Listen to Paul Celan's famous Holocaust poem 'Todesfuge', from the collection Mohn und Gedächtnis, read by the poet himself. (You will need Real Player.)

Bilingual Trakl presentation in London

2005-11-07T11:22:00.000Z

Tuesday 8 November 2005, 7.00 pm
The Austrian Cultural Forum invites you to a presentation

To the silenced: Selected poems by Georg Trakl

Will Stone will present his new translation of Georg Trakl’s poetry and, with Martin Liebscher, introduce and read poems from the book. Georg Trakl, who died in the First World War, is one of the major poets of the Expressionist period.

Admission is free but reservation is essential.
Austrian Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, London sw7 1pq
020 7584 8653 ; culture@austria.org.uk

British views of the GDR

2005-11-04T12:48:00.000Z

Anyone in Berlin next week may be interested in an event entitled Views from abroad - Britische Perspektiven auf die DDR. It is being held on 9 November at the Zeughauskino, and starts at 19.00 (admission free, no reservations necessary). Details

BRÜCKE - Die Geburt des deutschen Expressionismus

2005-11-03T12:04:00.000Z

200 Meisterwerke aus internationalen Sammlungen
01.10.05 bis 15.01.06, Berlin

Die Gründung der Künstlergruppe "Brücke" 1905, eines der wichtigsten Ereignisse in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, jährte sich im Juni 2005 zum 100sten Mal. Den abschließenden Höhepunkt der Feierlichkeiten im Jubiläumsjahr verspricht die Ausstellung „BRÜCKE – Die Geburt des deutschen Expressionismus“. Sie vereint ca. 220 Meisterwerke der "Brücke"-Künstler Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Pechstein, Nolde, Mueller und Amiet sowie ihrer künstlerischen Verwandten, wie Edvard Munch und Ferdinand Hodler, aus zahlreichen öffentlichen und privaten internationalen Sammlungen - zum Teil selten gezeigt, einige erstmals in Berlin zu sehen. Nach Madrid und Barcelona ist die Ausstellung des Brücke Museums in der Berlinischen Galerie die dritte und letzte Station der umfangreichen Retrospektive, die in Malerei, Zeichnung, Druckgrafik und Plastik außerordentliche Einblicke in das Leben und Arbeiten der "Brücke"-Künstler gibt.

Sehen Sie einige Meisterwerke der Ausstellung in der Bildergalerie.

In Dresden wandten sich die Architekturstudenten Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel und Karl Schmidt-Rottluff enthusiastisch der Kunst zu. Zur künstlerischen Maxime wurde allein der Wille, frei und unabhängig von allen kunstakademischen Bindungen zu schaffen. Mit ihrer Lebens- und Arbeitsweise, ihrer Bildsprache und ihrer kritischen Einstellung gegenüber der traditionellen Malerei begründeten sie eine Bewegung, die als Expressionismus bezeichnet wird und die neben den künstlerischen Ergebnissen auch Ausdruck und Beispiel eines neuen Lebensgefühles wurde. Im Bestreben, die Kunst von Grund auf zu erneuern, bildete die „Brücke“ eine völlig neuartige Künstlergemeinschaft; in den Jahren ihres Bestehens bis 1913 versuchten die Maler ihr Ideal von einer harmonischen Einheit von Kunst und Leben zu verwirklichen. Im Zentrum ihrer Arbeit stand konnte somit nicht mehr die absolut naturgetreue Abbildung des Gesehenen stehen, vielmehr ging es den Künstlern um die Wiedergabe des subjektiv Empfundenen. Im gemeinsamen Zeichnen und Malen fanden sie eine völlig freie künstlerische Ausdrucksweise, die jedoch immer dem Gegenständlichen und dem Erzählerischen verpflichtet blieb.

Schiller & Psychotherapy

2005-11-02T11:52:00.000Z

A unique seminar, conducted by PROFESSOR NIGEL REEVES OBE, Professor of German, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Aston University, co-author (with Kenneth Dewhurst) of Friedrich Schiller: Medicine, Psychology and Literature (1978).

Sunday 6 November 2005, 10 a.m -- 1 p.m.
Meeting Room A, Acland Building, Regent's College, Inner Circle, Regent's Park, London NW1 4NS
Cost: £5

It is not widely known that, as well as being one of Germany's greatest poets and playwrights, and a formidable historian, theoretician of art and poetry, and philosopher of freedom, Schiller practised psychotherapy. His early case study, 'On Grammont's Melancholy', and other important contributions to psychology, psychotherapy and psychosomatics, are translated in Professor Reeves's book. Both Freud and Jung repeatedly wrote of Schiller as an inspiration for their theory and practice. He influenced Freud's theory of drives and his writings on sentimental and naive poetry was developed by Jung in his theory of psychological types. Freud paid tribute to Schiller for having anticipated the practice of relaxing critical consciousness for 'free association'. Schiller anticipated Binswanger's thinking on 'existential Gestalt'; his 'play instinct' looks forward to Huizinga's and Winnicott's theories of play; and his account of a meditative mountain climb in his poem 'Der Spaziergang' probably inspired the structure of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.

In Sunday's seminar, Professor Reeves will discuss, among other things, Schiller's management of, and thinking on, Grammont's melancholy; his wide-ranging contributions to psychology; and his intentional writing of his drama as a psychotherapy for his audience. There will be a discussion in the afternoon, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., on Professor Reeves's presentation.

Apply to Anthony Stadlen; Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857; E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

Frauenkirche, Dresden

2005-10-30T17:23:00.000Z

The Frauenkirche has been re-consecrated in Dresden 60 years after being destroyed by Allied bombing. The charred remains of the church were left untouched by the GDR authorities to serve as a reminder of the war. The reconstruction began only after Germany's reunification.

At 10 o'clock today, the bells of the Frauenkirche rang. Outside, crowds gathered to watch the service relayed live on a giant screen. Inside, the church was packed with hundreds of dignitaries, including German President Horst Köhler, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the Duke of Kent, as well as many of the architects and donors who were involved in the reconstruction project. There were songs of praise and readings. "Our hearts and minds are moved by gratitude and great joy," the Lutheran bishop told the gathering. Bishop Bohl said the restoration of the baroque church was a "great work in the spirit of reconciliation".

Frankfurter Buchmesse 2005

2005-10-21T11:13:00.000+01:00

The 57th Frankfurt Book Fair has opened! It takes place from the 19th to the 23rd October, showcasing books, their authors, publishers, as well as art and multimedia. There are some 500 events every day on a vast site.

German Women's Writing

2005-10-11T11:58:00.000+01:00

This term there is a public lecture series at the University of Cambridge on Landmarks in German Women’s Writing, which includes lectures on poets Else Lasker-Schüler and Ingeborg Bachmann, amongst others.
All welcome
Thursdays at 5 pm, Michaelmas Term 2005
Room 7, Lecture Block A, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA

13 Oct
Kevin Hilliard - 'The Enlightenment: Sophie von La Roche'
20 Oct
Ursula Hudson-Wiedenmann - 'Romanticism: Bettine von Arnim'
27 Oct
Roger Paulin - 'Biedermeier: Annette von Droste-Hülshoff'
3 Nov
Andrew Webber - 'The Early Twentieth Century: Else Lasker-Schüler'
10 Nov
Andrea Capovilla - 'The Weimar Period: Irmgard Keun'
17 Nov
Stephanie Bird - 'Modern Austria: Ingeborg Bachmann'
24 Nov
Anita Bunyan - 'Modern Germany: Christa Wolf'

The Meaning of Tingo

2005-09-27T18:12:00.000+01:00

German propensity for compounds creates many delightful instances where a single word requires an entire clause in English. Kummerspeck literally means 'grief bacon': it is the word that designates the fat put on due to overeating when you are anxious and emotional. A Putzfimmel is a mania for cleaning and Drachenfutter (literally dragon fodder) refers to the peace offerings which guilty husbands make to their wives. Or there is die beleidigte Leberwurst spielen - to stick one's lower lip out in a sulk (literally to act the offended liver sausage). Perhaps it's a Backpfeifengesicht - a face that cries out for a fist in it. These delightful examples have been collected by Adam Jacot de Boinod into the book The Meaning Of Tingo, a collection of words and phrases from around the world. "What I'm really trying to do is celebrate the joy of foreign words (in a totally unjudgmental way) and say that while English is a great language, one shouldn't be surprised there are many others having, as they do, words with no English equivalent," he says. Having consulted over 280 dictionaries and 140 websites, he is convinced that a country's dictionary says more about its culture than a guidebook.

European Day of Languages

2005-09-26T00:12:00.000+01:00

To mark the European Day of Languages today - a Council of Europe initiative to celebrate linguistic diversity and promote language learning - the Humbul Humanities Hub announces the launch of its online collection Internet Resources for Modern Languages. Based on a forthcoming printed guide to the best of the Web, this collection offers a taste of what's available for a range of language, literary and area studies. Humbul discovers, reviews and catalogues online resources suitable for learning, teaching and research in the humanities. The Internet Resources for Modern Languages collection samples the broad range of online resources for literary studies that already feature in Humbul's catalogue, including German studies.

Sebald Lecture and Translation Prize

2005-09-17T20:25:00.000+01:00

The Sebald Lecture commemorating W.G. Sebald, German novelist and founder of the British Centre for Literary Translation, will be given this year by Germaine Greer. Her lecture 'On Not Knowing (Aeolian) Greek: The Metamorphoses of Sappho' forms part of an event celebrating the art of translation. The evening also includes presentation of the 2005 Translation Prizes honouring the best in contemporary literary translation.

Congratulations to Karen Leeder, winner of the 2005 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for her translation of Selected Poems by Evelyn Schlag. Karen Leeder, Fellow in German at New College Oxford, has published widely on German poetry and translated Bertolt Brecht, Michael Krüger, Brigitte Oleschinski and Raoul Schrott. She has also edited a collection of poetry after Brecht.

3 October 2005: 6pm readings, 7.30pm lecture
UCL Bloomsbury Theatre, 15 Gordon Street, London WC1H
Box Office: 020 7388 8822

Elections

2005-09-16T12:12:00.000+01:00

The elections taking place on 18 September are the subject of much debate, including perspectives on gender, youth and a grand coalition. It remains unclear how CDU, SPD, Grün, and Links will form the new constellation of power in the Bundestag.

Translation

2005-09-10T18:39:00.000+01:00

On literary translation

Modern poetry in translation

Rilke in translation

Heym in translation

Translation prize awarded for contemporary German poetry

German poetry in the age of globalisation

German poetry in Australian translation

The Meaning of Tingo

100 words on a poem: No.9

2005-09-01T15:46:00.000+01:00

Volker Braun’s poem ‘Hiroshima, 57 N.D.B.’ marks a ‘Treffpunkt’ – where rivers meet, where the barefoot shrine-visitor bows, and where the atom bomb’s ash and fire return. The use of hexameter in this Japan poem cannot but recall Goethe’s Italy poem ‘Froh empfind ich mich nun auf klassischem Boden begeistert’, another first-person encounter with a foreign culture. However, Braun’s is also a poem of neologisms: a borrowing (der homeless), a compound (BaumohneÄste), and a derived feminine (der Schatten / die Schattin). City and shrine elide and a speaking shadow closes the poem with the injuction ‘Geh und lebe mit Lust’.

See Volker Braun, ‘Japangedichte’, Neue Beiträge zur Germanistik, 111 (2003).

Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse

2005-08-31T11:31:00.000+01:00

The left-wing activist and student leader Rudi Dutschke was murdered in 1968. In his song "Drei Kugeln auf Rudi Dutschke", Wolf Biermann sang 'Die Kugel Nummer eins kam aus Springers Zeitungswald, Ihr habt dem Mann die Groschen auch noch dafür bezahlt'. Now the Kochstrasse in Berlin-Kreuzberg, near to the edifice of the Springer-Verlag, is being re-named Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse. The Berliner Zeitung gleefully reports that Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse will intersect with Axel-Springer-Strasse and traffic on Dutschke-Strasse will have priority.

Further info

September events in Berlin

2005-08-30T11:20:00.000+01:00

06.9.2005 Lesung: Hans Magnus Enzensberger liest Wallace Stevens

21 Uhr

Aus Anlaß des 50. Todestages von Wallace Stevens gibt Hans Magnus Enzensberger einen Einblick in das lyrische Werk eines der einflussreichsten amerikanischenPoeten der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts.

Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin

Berliner Festspiele

Schaperstraße 24

10719 Berlin

08.9.2005 Vortrag: Ulrike Draesner
20 Uhr
Autoren-Poetik: „Rufen, was es nicht gibt”
Literarisches Colloquium Berlin
Am Sandwerder 5
14109 Berlin

20.9.2005 Geburtstagslesung für Adolf Endler
20 Uhr
Lesung: Elke Erb, Barbara Köhler und Katja Lange-Müller
Literarisches Colloquium Berlin
Am Sandwerder 5
14109 Berlin

22.9.2005 Brecht-Liederprogramm
20 Uhr
Songs der zwanziger und dreißiger Jahre, vertont von Kurt Weill und Hanns Eisler
Brecht-Haus
Chausseestraße 125
10115 Berlin-Mitte

No other European city offers so much in the literary sphere as Berlin. Little poetry-reading gatherings, daily readings in literature centres, bookshops, libraries, salons and cafés, events in numerous clubs, but also established festivals define the Berlin literary scene. Berlin is a capital of writers: over 500 live there. The initiative Berlin liest! is a forum bringing together the diverse activities to do with reading in the city.

59. Münstereifeler Literaturgespräch

2005-08-20T09:33:00.000+01:00

Lyrik und Gesellschaft im 21. Jahrhundert
16.9. bis 18.9.2005

Gedichte bedürfen des Vortrags und der Deutung. Zwei Lyrikerinnen und zwei Lyriker – Marcel Beyer, Ulrike Draesner, Norbert Hummelt und Barbara Köhler – interpretieren und kommentieren sich wechselseitig. Eingangs ein literaturkritischer Überblick über aktuelle Trends in deutscher Lyrik, mittendrin ein Blick auf Poesie in Bildern, zum Abschluß eine Matinee mit Texten und Tönen.

Kurt-Schumacher-Akademie, Willy-Brandt-Straße 19, Bad Münstereifel

Rilke in translation

2005-08-15T15:26:00.000+01:00

There are now more than twenty American translations of the Duineser Elegien. Marjorie Perloff's interesting essay Reading Gass reading Rilke addresses the cult of Rilke in the USA, the politics of translation (who is doing it and how) and degrees of untranslatability amongst German modernists. Her response to William H. Gass's Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation highlights the pitfalls of cultural appropriation, with precise examples; her argument for learning German in order to read the poetry is utterly convincing.

At the Stephen Spender Memorial Trust (SSMT) website, see the Rilke poem 'Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes' and its translation by an anonymous translator.

100 words on a poem: No.8

2005-08-03T11:28:00.000+01:00

The physical capacities of sound are prominent in Durs Grünbein’s poem ‘Versprich mir’: an ‘ich’, for example, sounds within the words ‘versprich’, ‘dich’, ‘versprichst’, ‘sich’, ‘bricht’, ‘Nichts’, ‘spiegelbildlich’, before the assertion ‘Ich denke’. This translated and abbreviated cogito ergo sum is declared to be a rush of blood in the brain. The poem interweaves body imagery with other image-worlds: references to sonar, blindness, mirror and telescope thematize extensions and retractions of sight; there is a border-crossing here too ( ‘Kontrolle’, ‘Wände’, and mutual staring through binoculars). The ‘Fraktur’ in the brain thus suggests body-volatility as a political force.

See Durs Grünbein, Schädelbasislektion: Gedichte (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991).

Tip: literaturkritik.de

2005-08-01T10:21:00.000+01:00

Literatrkritik.de offers free online access to monthly reviews with a literary focus. The issue with Schwerpunkt: Lyrik is of particular interest and includes an introduction by Wulf Segebrecht on reading poetry, reviews of books about Rilke, and reviews of new German poetry collections.

Goethe on writing poetry

2005-07-25T12:10:00.000+01:00

"Die Welt ist so groß und reich und das Leben so mannigfaltig, daß es an Anlässen zu Gedichten nie fehlen wird. Aber es müssen alles Gelegenheitsgedichte sein, das heißt die Wirklichkeit muß die Veranlassung und den Stoff dazu hergeben. Allgemein und poetisch wird ein spezieller Fall eben dadurch, daß ihn der Dichter behandelt." (1823)

German art in Leicester

2005-07-21T14:46:00.000+01:00

Expressionism & Beyond
New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, in Leicester.
Open all year. Free admission.

Expressionism & Beyond is a new gallery dedicated to Leicester's outstanding collection of 20th-century German art. It explores Expressionism, showing how artists perceived the world through heightened colour. The gallery features a changing selection of oil paintings and works on paper, including paintings and prints by Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Gabriele Münter.

The collection originated in 1944 when the museum staged an exhibition entitled 'Mid-European Art', drawn from the local emigré community, which had fled Nazism. One of the lenders was Mrs Tekla Hess, widow of Alfred Hess, a renowned Erfurt collector of contemporary German art. After the exhibition, the museum acquired four works, all originally from Alfred Hess's collection. These were by Franz Marc, Lyonel Feininger, Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein. The collection continued to develop through purchase, gift and bequest and has now become one of the finest collections of Expressionist art in the UK.

POET: EVELYN SCHLAG

2005-07-15T23:20:00.000+01:00

The poetry collections

Einflüsterung nahe seinem Ohr. Gedichte. Vienna: Maioli, 1984.
Ortswechsel des Herzens. Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1989.
Der Schnabelberg. Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1992.
Das Talent meiner Frau. Gedichte 1992-1999. Salzburg, Vienna: Residenz, 1999.
Brauchst du den Schlaf dieser Nacht. Gedichte. Vienna: Zsolnay, 2002.
Selected Poems (bilingual edition). Manchester: Carcanet, 2004.

Events

2005-07-14T10:47:00.000+01:00

Büchnerpreis 2006

Celan seminar series

Aldeburgh poetry festival

Brecht poetry event in London

Berlin lit festival

Benn exhibition

Trakl workshop

Exhibition, festival, conference

Rilke seminar series

News from the LCB

German Poetry in the 20th Century: Lectures

Conference 2006: Women and Death

Winter in Berlin

Cambridge Seminar Series: Women's Writing

Frankfurter Buchmesse 2005

Reconsecration of Dresden's Frauenkirche

Reading: Hilde Domin

Conference 2005: Flaschenpost

Conference 2004: Interactions

Europe after the Rain

2005-07-11T15:17:00.000+01:00

Interactions: Poetry and Painting

2005 is the 60th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War, an apt time to consider two works - a painting and a poetry cycle - which address the legacy of that destruction. The poetry made in the 1990s is in dialogue with the painting from the 1940s.

Max Ernst’s painting ‘Europa nach dem Regen’

(in Wadsworth Atheneum, USA)

This apocalyptic work, made in 1940-42, shows a filigree landscape, brittle and intricately composed of thin corpses and decayed plant and mineral matter. The sky is pure, clean, the petrified earth eerie russets, yellows and greens. Birds, bird-headed humans and other indeterminate creatures hang or stand elongated. The flotsam-encrusted architecture suggests nature spreading over civilisation. Before this painting, Ernst made another with the same title in 1933, which resembles an aerial view of Europe ruined.

Durs Grünbein’s poems ‘Europa nach dem letzten Regen’

(in Nach den Satiren 1999)

Like the painting it is named after, Grünbein’s sequence of eleven poems is about an aftermath, about what remains after destruction. The poems, written in August to October 1996, focus on Dresden, bombed in 1945, as a crystallisation of Europe’s recent history. The first poem posits the perspective of a displaced person, returning home after the war is over to find a city destroyed. The final poem nods to the painter Ernst in the lines ‘Im Ernst, Max, von so einer Stadt / Träumt man leicht’, and the reference to ‘grausam zerschlissener Brokat’ recalls the texture of Ernst’s landscape in the painting.

See more on Dresden in poetry and on Grünbein's poetry

New Book

2005-07-08T10:30:00.000+01:00

Available now

Silke Arnold-de Simine (ed.)
Memory Traces: 1989 and the Question of German Cultural Identity
Series: Cultural History and Literary Imagination Vol. 5
Lang 2005

This essay collection examines the dynamics of memory organisation and the way it varies across different media and modes of discourse (including poetry) in post-Wende Germany. German unification put the post-war period into historical perspective and raised questions concerning the appropriate commemoration, preservation and reinterpretation of the past.

In the context of the debates on German literature during the 1990s, discussion revolved not only around the adequate aesthetic representation of the historical and cultural heritage, but even more so around the role of literature itself in that process. The contributions to this volume look at different discourses that were and still are concerned with reinterpreting and creating new collective symbols and narrative patterns in relation to Germany's past.

A review of this book is available in MLR (2006).

POET: THOMAS ROSENLÖCHER

2005-07-05T14:30:00.000+01:00

The poetry collections

Ich lag im Garten bei Kleinzschachwitz: Gedichte. Halle, Leipzig: mdv, 1982.
Schneebier: Gedichte. Halle, Leipzig: mdv, 1988.
Die Dresdner Kunstausübung. Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996.
Ich sitze in Sachsen und schau in den Schnee: 77 Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1998.
Am Wegrand steht Apollo: Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 2001.

POET: KATHRIN SCHMIDT

2005-07-02T10:01:00.000+01:00

The poetry collections

Poesiealbum 179. Berlin: Neues Leben, 1982.
Ein Engel fliegt durch die Tapetenfabrik. Berlin: Neues Leben, 1987.
Flußbild mit Engel: Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1995. (New edition Munich: Lyrikedition 2000, 2000)
GO-IN der Belladonnen: Gedichte. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2000.

Publishers of contemporary German poetry

2005-07-01T23:45:00.000+01:00

Druckhaus Galrev A small Berlin-Prenzlauer-Berg publisher, whose name is Verlag backwards; produces attractive editions with art, the unique anthology Abriss der Ariadnefabrik, and poetry by Bert Papenfuß (e.g. mors ex nihilo with art by Jörg Immendorf), Elke Erb, Thomas Böhme, Sascha Anderson and Frank-Wolf Matthies.

Lyrikedition 2000 Munich-based series publishing new collections by, for instance, Wilhelm Bartsch, and new editions of otherwise out-of-print collections by Kathrin Schmidt and Heinz Czechowski.

burgart-presse A small Rudolstadt publisher of poetry with art, stunning Künstlerbücher; poets include Harald Gerlach, Annerose Kirchner, Heinz Czechowski and Michael Wüstefeld.

Hanser Major literary publisher, including poetry hardbacks by, for instance, Raoul Schrott and Günter Kunert.

Fischer Wolfgang Hilbig and Hilde Domin’s poetry collections, as well as the Jahrbuch der Lyrik are published by this big publisher.

Suhrkamp Massive Frankfurt publisher, no art, CDs with hardbacks, ubiquitous but perfunctory paperbacks; poets include Durs Grünbein, Barbara Köhler, Marcel Beyer, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Albert Ostermaier, Kurt Drawert, Volker Braun.

Mitteldeutscher Verlag (mdv) Not really a poetry publisher, mdv has nonetheless published poets such as Volker Braun and Kerstin Hensel.

Aufbau Focuses on non-poetry mainly as regards new literature but has published poetry by Heinz Kahlau and Eva Strittmatter.

Poets writing in German

2005-07-01T11:18:00.000+01:00

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

POET: WILHELM BARTSCH

2005-06-27T11:41:00.000+01:00

The poetry collections

Poesiealbum 208. Berlin: Neues Leben, 1985.
Übungen im Joch: Gedichte. Berlin: Aufbau, 1986.
Gen Ginnungagap: Gedichte. Halle, mdv, 1994.
Ganz am Rande: Gedichte. Künstlerbuch mit Thomas Rug. Rheinbach: Gerard, 2000.
Tanz mit Siebzehn auf dem Fünfmarkschein: Gedichte. Bergen: WalUnter, 2001.
Null: Gedichte. Bernburg: augenweide, 2001.
Gnadenorte Eiszeitwerften: Gedichte. Munich: Lyrikedition 2000, 2003.

Introduction to late-20th-century poetry

2005-06-26T14:00:00.000+01:00

Postwar Germany’s golden age of poetry began with Die sächsische Dichterschule in the mid-1960s, received new impulses from the Berlin Prenzlauer Berg generation in the early 1980s, and was sustained by the up-and-coming poets of the newly unified Germany. GDR poetry has often been judged in terms of extremes of aestheticism – seeing writing as an end in itself – and political commitment – seeing it as an instrument for the achievement of other purposes. And it is only since the inception of the Berlin Republic that other readings have begun to be fully explored. Still, as in many areas of cultural history, the East has become the forgotten Germany. This is especially remiss in the case of poetry, as the most vital and compelling work of the postwar period emanated predominantly from the poets in the GDR or émigrés who once lived in the GDR.

Collections such as Günter Kunert’s Unterwegs nach Utopia, Volker Braun’s Training des aufrechten Gangs, Sarah Kirsch’s Zaubersprüche and Reiner Kunze’s Sensible Wege made the GDR seem the place it was happening in poetry in the 1960s and 1970s. The GDR experience, in all its phases, seems to have led to a heightened sense of the frail assumptions that underlie any system of civilisation. Poetry became extraordinarily interrogative, but its intramural coding does not alienate a later audience. The anthology Ein Molotow-Cocktail auf fremder Bettkante: Lyrik der siebziger/achtziger Jahre von Dichtern der DDR presents a compelling cross-section of work by numerous poets. Individual highlights of the 1980s included Uwe Kolbe’s Bornholm II, Steffen Mensching’s Tuchfühlung, Kerstin Hensel’s Poesiealbum 222 and Wolfgang Hilbig’s die versprengung. Such collections sample writing of persistent effort, with a strong topographical imperative, stylistic aplomb and playfulness. Collections by poets from the GDR went on to dominate the new German poetry scene in the early 1990s: three of the most innovative and impressive collections were Barbara Köhler’s Deutsches Roulette, Durs Grünbein’s Schädelbasislektion and Kathrin Schmidt’s Flußbild mit Engel.