Haus für Poesie

(born 1952 in Akron, Ohio) lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is also Professor of Creative Writing.
In 1987, Dove was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fer cycle of poems “Thomas and Beulah” (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1986). In this work as in others, Dove places the apparently insignificant moments that shape our lives in relation to historical and political developments.
From 1993 to 1995 Rita Dove was Poet Laureate of the United States. She was the first person of Afro-American origin, and also the youngest, to have been accorded this honour. During her tenure of this office, Dove mainly tried to put across the message that poetry is not something that is reserved for an elite but should have a place in daily life. Among other things, she appeared on Sesame Street to get children interested in poems and literature.
Rita Dove and her work have been honoured with many awards, including, as well as stipendiums and prizes, more than twenty honorary doctorates. Recent distinctions have included the John Heinz Prize (1996), the highest award in monetary terms for American artists, the “National Humanities Medal” awarded by the President of the United States (also 1996), the Library Lion Medal of the New York Public Library (2000), the “Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award” (2001) and the “Common Wealth Award” (2006).
Her most recent collections of poetry have been “On the Bus with Rosa Parks” (1999), “American Smooth” (2004) and the highly-praised “Sonata Mulattica” (2009), all published by W W Norton&Co.

Adolf Endler (born 1930 in Düsseldorf) emigrated to the GDR in 1955 and worked in a variety of jobs, including as a crane driver and transport worker. From 1955 to 1957 he studied at the Leipzig Literature Institute and has been an independent writer ever since, publishing poetry, criticism, prose and essays. In 1979 he was excluded from the GDR Writers’ Union. Together with Brigitte Schreier-Endler, he organised the legendary “Orplid&Co.“ readings in Café Clara in Berlin-Mitte.
Adolf Endler is known as the ”father figure of the artists’ biotope in Prenzlauer Berg“, as the “grand old Owlglass” of the GDR or, as he says himself, “one of the most overgrown marrows of the new poetry”. At any rate, he is one of the wildest and most sensuous poets in Germany.
He has received many literary awards, including the Bremen Literature Prize, the Peter Huchel Prize, the Critics’ Prize for the SWR “best list”, the Brothers Grimm Prize of the City of Hanau and the testimonial of the Schiller Foundation. In 2008 he was awarded the Rainer Malkowski Prize.
Publications (a selection):
Tarzan am Prenzlauer Berg (Tarzan in Prenzlauer Berg), Reclam Verlag, 1994
Nebbich (Nebbich), Wallstein Verlag, 2005
akte endler (endler file), Reclam Verlag, 1981, 1988
Der Pudding der Apokalypse (The Pudding of the Apocalypse), Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999
Krähenüberkrächzte Rolltreppe (Crowed-Over Escalator), Wallstein Verlag, 2005

Julián Herbert (born in Acapulco in 1971) is a poet and prose writer and is the composer and singer with the rock band Madrastras. He lives in Saltillo, Mexico, and his preferred place to write is in the desert. In his readings, Herbert works with videos, sounds and installations, transporting the poetry into the visual, taking language and imagery far beyond known limits. Julián Herbert is one of the youngest members of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte and collaborates with the El Taller de la Caballeriza artists group.

Publications:
Jesus liebt dich nicht/Cristonoteama. Verlagshaus Johannes CS Frank, now Verlagshaus Berlin 2014
Bisel. Impronta Casa Editora 2014
Cocaína. Almuzara 2006
Kubla Khan. Era 2005
Unmundoinfiel. Joaquín Mortiz 2004
Autorretrato a los 27. Eloísa Cartonera 2003
La resistencia. Filo de caballos 2003

Awards:
Premio de Novela Elena Poniatowska 2012
Premio Jaén de Novela Inédita 2011
Premio Nacional de Cuento Juan José Arreola 2006
Premio Nacional de Literatura Gilberto Owen 2003

Barbara Köhler (born in Burgstädt, Germany, in 1959) worked after leaving school as a skilled textile production worker in Plauen, and subsequently in a care home for the elderly and as a lighting technician in the Karl Marx Stadt (now Chemnitz) municipal theatre. From 1985 to 1988 she studied at the Johannes R. Becher Institute for Literature in Leipzig. Freelance since 1988, in 1994 she moved to Duisburg, where she still lives, working as a freelance translator (Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein) and writer, also creating text installations and multiples and temporary and permanent works for public spaces and private gardens.
Her prizes include the 1996 Clemens Brentano Prize and the 2008 Joachim Ringelnatz Prize. She was also the ‘City Scribe’ in Rheinsburg in 1995 and Writer in Residence at the University of Warwick in 1997. In 2012 Köhler holds the Thomas Kling Lecturership in Poetics at the University of Bonn.
Publications (selection):
Deutsches Roulette. Gedichte 1984-1989. Suhrkamp-Verlag 1991.
Wittgensteins Nichte. Vermischte Schriften, Mixed Media. Suhrkamp 1999.
Niemands Frau. Gesänge zur Odyssee. Suhrkamp 2007.

Kgafela oa Magogodi (born 1968 in Johannesburg, South Africa) studied music, African literature and film and now teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He is one of South Africa’s most important poets and its best-known spoken word performer, as well as working as a jazz musician and theatre director. Numerous international stage appearances have made him known throughout the world. His work combines rap lyrics with social observation and political commentary. He challenges and provokes with his honest and sometimes shockingly graphic language. From his performance “I Mike What I Like” came the film of the same name which has been shown at festivals all over the world. As well as poetry, he also writes stories and film scripts.
In 2004 Kgafela oa Magogodi was an artist-in-residence at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.
Publications:
Thy Condom Come, New Leaf, 2000
outspoken, Laugh-it-off 2004)
I Mike What I Like, Laugh-it-off, 2004 (CD) und Film Resource Unit, 2006 (DVD)

For Bernard Noël (born 1930 in Aveyron, France), poetry is resistance: resistance to common language, especially the language of the media, “which is nothing but actuality, a time-span that does not concern poetry”. He has been influenced as much by historical events such as the war in Algeria as by writers such as Camus and Sartre. He came to prominence with his book of poems “Extraits du corps”, published in 1958.
Bernard Noël is one of the most important representatives of contemporary French literature. As well as poetry, his work includes novels, essays, plays and art criticism. His lifetime work, comprising more than sixty titles in various genres, was awarded the Prix National de Poésie in 1992.
He is currently working on a series of novellas in the form of monologues, including “La Langue d’Anna” (Anna’s Voice), 2006, which is his first book to be translated into German.

Maja Ratkje (born 1973 in Trondheim, Norway) is a composer and performer and one of the most important international proponents of electronic music.
Her main instrument is still her voice, however, with its nuances of variation and modulation; there is poetry in her voice, discovering ever new languages of sound.
She has received numerous prizes for work, including the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris for composers under 30, and she has won the Norwegian Edvard Prize twice. In 2001 Maja Ratkje was the first female composer ever to win the Arne Nordheim Distinction Award and, two years later, the Prix Ars Electronica for her solo album ‘Voice’. In 2008 she was “composer in residence” at the Nordland Music Festival in North Norway.Maja Ratkje composes music for films, theatre, operas and installations. As well as her solo career, Ratkje works with the ensemble SPUNK and the sound poet Jaap Blonk.
Publications:
Maja Ratkje & Jazzkammer: Voice, Rune Grammofon/ECM, 2003
Maja Ratkje & Jaap Blonk: post-human identities, Kontrans, 2005
Maja Ratkje & John Hegre: Ballads, Dekorder/A-Musik, 2006
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje: Majaap, Kontrans, 2004
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje: River Mouth Echoes, Tzadik Records/Sunny Moon, 2008

Olga Sedakova (born 1949 in Moscow, Russia) teaches Literary Theory at Moscow University. Before 1990 no poems of hers were printed in the USSR, but they were spread through readings and unofficial publications, so that Olga Sedakova was known to a great many readers early on. Her collection “Wrata okna, arki” was published in Paris in 1986. A full collection of her poetry, “Stichi” ws published in Moscow in 1994. To date, she has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose as well as two books for children. Olga Sedakova is a member of the Russian PEN Club and is one of Russia’s most important contemporary poets. In her poems, she combines modern metaphorical language with classical images and mythologies.
She has received many awards for her work, including the Andrey Belyi Prize, the Paris Prize for Russian poets and the 1996 European Poetry Prize. Her texts have been translated into nearly twenty languages. English publications of her poems include an appearance in the “Anthology of Russian Women’s Writing, 1777-1992”, edited by Catriona Kelly, Oxford University Press, 1994, “Contemporary Russian Poetry, A Bilingual Anthology”, Selected, with an Introduction, Translation, and Notes by Gerald S. Smith, Indiana University Press, Indianapolis, 1993, “Third Wave: The New Russian Poetry” edited by Kent Johnson and Stephen M. Ashby, University of Michigan Press, 1992, and “Poems and Elegies”, by Olga Sedakova, Compiled, Introduced and Annotated by Slava I. Yastremski, Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, USA, 2003.

Adam Wiedemann (born 1967 in Krotoszyn, Poland) is a poet and writer, literary and music critic and translator of Slovenian poetry. He is one of the best-known of Polish poets of the younger generation. Wiedemann writes humorous everyday verse with very precisely worked language and full of false trails. The poems are complex, ironic compositions with unexpected turns. “The joy of reading Wiedemann’s poems is so great because you have the feeling that you’re being drawn in, not only as a sympathetic reader but also into the creation of the meaning of his poetry.” (Andrzej Skrendo)
Prizes/distinctions/grants and fellowships:
Prize of the Polish Book Publishers’ Society (1998), Prize of the Koscielski Foundation (1999), “Gdynia” Literature Prize for the collection “Pensum” (2008), nominated for the NIKE Literature Prize (1998, 1999, 2005)
Publications:
Rozrusznik (1998)
Konwalia (2001)
Kalipso (2004)
Pensum (2007)
Filtry (2008)