Dirceu Villa, Foto: Garcia
Tue. 5 June 8 pm
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, Kleines Parkett, Admission: € 6 / 4
With Ricardo Aleixo Brazil / Barbara Köhler Germany; Jussara Salazar Brazil / Christian Lehnert Germany; Dirceu Villa Brazil / Ulf Stolterfoht Germany; Hosted by Aurélie Maurin literary translator, Berlin and Thomas Wohlfahrt Director of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin
Brazilian poetry draws its energy from many different sources, from the Concrete Poetry of the avant-garde to Afro-Brazilian storytelling traditions and songwriting to Visual Poetry. There is hardly any other country where so many kinds of poetry collide with each other. Berlin-based Brazilian poet, video artist and DJ Ricardo Domeneck has picked some of the most exciting Brazilian writers from various poetic styles to meet German-speaking fellow poets for this year's VERSschmuggel translation workshop. The results of their encounter will be presented over two evenings on 5 and 6 June in bilingual readings.
Ricardo Aleixo (born 1960 in Belo Horizonte) is a poet, essayist, visual artist, sound designer, singer, composer and performer. His work, reminiscent of that of the concrete poetry of Augusto de Campos, is characterised by formal research and multi-media experimentation. Barbara Köhler (born in Burgstädt in 1959) lives in Duisburg as a writer and translator of such writers as Samuel Beckett and Gertrude Stein. She also works with video and makes text installations and multiples, which she exhibits as temporary and permanent works in public spaces and private gardens.
The poems of Jussara Salazars (born in Pernambuco in 1959) reveal a religious and mythological world characterised by inter-textual reference and metaphorical language. To research her poetry collection Carpideiras she received the Criação Literária fellowship from the Brazilian Culture Ministry in 2009. The poetry of Christian Lehnert (born in Dresden in 1969) could be described as discrete metaphysics. His collection Aufkommender Atem [Emerging Breath](2011, Suhrkamp Verlag) is dedicated to the great religious questions, without forgetting the everyday.
Dirceu Villa (born 1975 in São Paulo) is a translator of Ezra Pound and reader of Ovid, Guido Cavalcanti and Baudelaire. His radical plurality finds its way into his poems as narrative monologue, dramatic excerpt, delightful love lyrics or as descriptive tour de force which is always subject to precision of rhythm and imagery and concision of expression. Ulf Stolterfoht (born in Stuttgart in 1963) became known to a wider audience with the publication of his Lingos collections from Urs Engeler (Lingos I-IX, translated by Rosemarie Waldrop, has been published by Burning Deck Books, Providence, Rhode Island). He has also translated Gertrude Stein and Tom Raworth, spoken with Peter Dittmers on questions of poetry (Ammengespräche, roughbooks 2011) and founded the virtual Empire of Brueterich. Since 2008 he has been a guest professor at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig.
The reading will be followed by Brazilian music in the foyer played by bye bye brasil.
Sponsored by: German Foreign Office
With the kind support of: Deutsch-Brasilianische Gesellschaft e.V.
Project leader: Aurélie Maurin, Assistant: Isabel von Holt