|
Ken Yamamoto Foto: Robert Gärtner
|
The variety of Ken Yamamoto’s (born 1977, Paris) biography makes it immediately clear: here is someone who has spread his roots far and wide, in much more than one country and one poetics.
Yamamoto was born in 1977 in Paris as the son of a Japanese father and a German mother, and grew up speaking French. He worked as a dubbing actor, conveyor-belt worker, bike courier, diamond salesman, office worker, exhibition guide and assistant director.
Yamamoto studied Art History and German Philology and has been performing spoken word poetry for some years now. He holds workshops in slam poetry and creative writing. You can find him every month at the Berlin reading event “Spree vom Weizen”.
In 2007 he received the Martha-Saalfeld Förderpreis and in 2008, a residency from the Künstlerdorf Schöppingen. In the same year he published a book of poems, “skzzn”, with James & Warrington. In 2011 he worked in Chicago with the inventor of the poetry slam, Marc Kelly Smith, on the project “Performative Translations”.
Publications
skzzn, James & Warrington 2008