Event: Mai 2018

Thu
31/5/18
09:30 PM

19. poesiefestival berlin

Robert Forster: Learn to Burn – A concert and talk

Event-Picture: Robert Forster: Learn to Burn – A concert and talk Robert Forster (c) Stephen Booth
Robert Forster (c) Stephen Booth

Music

With Robert Forster AUS singer-songwriter
Presenter: Christine Heise DEU music journalist

If we didn’t know before, we do now – since Bob Dylan was given the Nobel Prize for Literature it’s clear that lyrics must be poetry and songwriters are poets. Once again, the poesiefestival berlin is inviting an important representative of the genre to present his work in an environment of contemporary poetry.

Robert Forster is – as paradoxical as it sounds – a dandy of understatement. Together with Grant McLennan and Belinda “Lindy” Morrison he was the creative core of the band The Go-Betweens, formed in 1977. They never had that big top ten hit, but what they did produce were a string of nearly perfect albums. At the time Forster played the role of the dandyish front man (sometimes in a dress, sometimes in a poncho), at the same time living and sending up the pop star dream. His musical contemporary Nick Cave has called him “the truest and strangest poet of his generation”. The fame of the band still lives on – every other band approaching the top of the Pitchfork Scale either cites The Go-Betweens as an influence or sounds like them.

Forster has also released a string of solo albums since the late 1980s, most recently the acclaimed Songs to Play (2015). He demonstrates that no more than four chords are needed to write songs that are at the same time contemporary and timeless. Following the early death of his partner-in-crime McLennan Forster wrote his memoirs, Grant & I. It is one of the most significant books to be written in recent years about pop music beside Mark E. Smith’s Renegade and Morrissey’s Autobiography.

In this concert and talk Robert Forster talks to Christine Heise about his work and sings from it.

English-German interpreting will be available for this event.

The Concert and talk: Robert Forster: Learning to Burn is made possible with the kind support of The Mandala Hotel and ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen.

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Location:
Akademie der Künste

Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin


Entrance fee:
10/7 €


Tickets online