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Eugen Gomringer (born in Bolivia in 1925) is one of the ‘fathers’ of Concrete Poetry. His text ‘vom vers zur konstellation’ (from verse to constellation) is, together with the manifesto by the Brazilian Noigrandes group of writers, the founding document of this literature. His poems have been published all over the world and are a firmly-established fixture in school textbooks. In 1953, together with Dieter Roth and Marcel Wyss, Gomringer founded the magazine Spirale and from 1960 to 1965 he edited the konkrete poesie – poesia concreta series of books. He has been a member of the Academy of the Arts since 1971. In 2000, he founded the Institute for Constructive Art and Concrete Poetry (IKKP) in Rehau in Upper Franconia, where he now lives. As well as numerous essays and other texts, Gomringer has published poems in German, Spanish, French, English and Swiss-German.
His most recent publications have not, however, been concrete poetry but ‘eines sommers sonette‘ (‚one summer’s sonnets‘) and ‘der sonette gezeiten’ (‘seasons of the sonnets’) (2008 and 2009 from Edition Signathur). He has been awarded the Rehau Culture Prize, the Bavarian Order of merit and 1st prize in the poetry competition of the Sider Rilke Festival. In January of this year he received the Alice Salomon Poetics Prize.
Publications (most recent):
quadrate aller länder (Part 4 of the Works published by Edition Splitter, Vienna 2006)
eines sommers sonette. Dozwil 2008
der sonette gezeiten. Dozwil 2009