Haus für Poesie

Geert Buelens (born 1971 Duffel, Belgium) is a poet, essayist and lecturer. He has been intensively engaging with poetry from the period of the First World War for years, and has published numerous academic works and poetry anthologies on the topic, such as the almost 700-page poetry anthology "Het lijf in slijk geplant" (The body planted in the mud). This Spring Suhrkamp published his encompassing study “Europas Dichter und der Erste Weltkrieg” (Europe’s Poets and the First World War), which looks at the poetry from this era in the context of cultural and political upheavals. This book received the Dutch Non-fiction Book Prize in 2009. Buelens own poetry displays the distinct influence of 20^th Century American poetry, and distinguishes itself through a language rich in sound and rhythm effects.

Buelens is Professor of Contemporary Dutch Literature at the University of Utrecht and in 2012 became a member of the Royal Academy for Dutch Literary and Linguistic Studies. He is a co-editor of the Dutch literary magazine “Yang” and writes for large Dutch and Belgian daily newspapers.

Publications (selected)

Het is, Meulenhoff/Manteau 2002
Verzeker u, Meulenhoff/Manteau 2005
Europas Dichter und der Erste Weltkrieg, Suhrkamp 2014

Jacques Darras (born 1939 Ponthieu-Marquenterre, France) is a poet, essayist and translator, and taught up until 2004 English and American Literature at the University of Picardie.

His long poem, Tout Reprende à 1914, which fills up an entire book and was published in March, attempts to make the lessons that the outbreak oft he first world war taught us understandable, in order to think Europe anew. In it, he critically confronts the attitudes of poets like Apollinaire, Péguy and Stadler, and their pacifistic convictions. The book is also a journey to Bois de la Gruerie, where Jacques Darras’ grandfather died in the First World War.

The intensive examination of landscapes, in particular that of Northern France, is central for his work. In 1988 Darras began an epic long poem about the banks of the Maye, a river in the French Départment Manche. Since the publication of the first volume La Maye I, seven further volumes have appeared with ‘Le Cri’ and ‘Galimard’ publishing houses. For Darras’ poetic texts, the sound of language, rhythm and melody play a central role.

Additionally, Darras has also distinguished himself with his translations of Whitman, Coleridge, Blake, Lowry, Shakespeare and Pound. Darras has received, among other awards, the ‘Prix Apollinaire’ (2004) and the ‘Grand Prix de Poésie de’l Académie française’ (2006) for his work.

In 1989 he became the first Frenchman to be invited, to hold a ‘Lord Reith Lecture’, on the bicentennial of the French Revolution, which was screened by the BBC.

Publications (Selected)

La Maye I, 1988
Van Eyck et les rivières, dont la Maye, 3 Cailloux 1996
La conjugaison des places amoureuses, Éditions de Corlevour 2010
Je sors enfin du Bois de la Gruerie - Tout reprendre à 1914, Éditions Arfuyen 2014

Marina Hertrampf (born 1976 Braunschweig) teaches French and Spanish Literature and Cultural Studies at Passau and Regensburg Universities.

One of Hertrampf’s current research focuses is the French literature of the First World War, where she deals in particular with the works of Henri-Pierre Roché, Romain Rolland and Yvan Goll. An ongoing publication project examines the (anti-) war poetry of, among others, Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars and René Dalize. Apart from this, Hertrampf carries out research and teaches on the avant-garde and modernity, intermediality and comics.

In her dissertation she examined the relationship between photography and literature in contemporary French literature.

Publications (selected)

Photographie und Roman. Intermedialität im Werk von Patrick Deville (Photography and Novel. Intermediality in the Work of Patrick Deville), Transcript 2011

Michael Lailach (born 1969 Meerbusch) is a curator and academic at the Art Library of the State Museums of Berlin. In the exhibitions Lailach has overseen and in his publications, avant-garde art forms between image and text are often front and centre, for example in “Poetry Intermedia: Künstlerbücher seit 1960” (2002), “Based on Paper: Revolution der Kunst” (2007), “Welt aus Schrift” (2010) and “Kilométrage – Jan Brzekowski und seine Künstlerwelten” (2010).

Lailach received his PhD in Art History at the University of Tübingen and currently oversees the collection Book and Media Art in the Berlin Art Library, as well as the archive of the avant-garde collector Egidio Marzona.

Publications (selection)

Based on Paper, Walther König 2007
Land Art: The Earth as Canvas, Taschen 2007

Sergej Moreino (born 1964 Moscow, Russia) moved to Latvia in 1987 and has been working as an independent author and translator since 1988.

Moreinos’ personal connection to the First World War is via his grandfather Samuil Moreino, born in Jewish-Catholic Druya in Poland, who during the war fought in the files of the Belgian militia in Liège, and vanished without a trace in the confusion of the war. Sergej Moreinos’ poems deal with these experiences. He is concerned with drawing a line under this conflict that happened now a hundred years ago in order to “remove a drop of romanticism from this monstruous, but, thank God, long gone conflict. For otherwise, the rose of new wars might bloom from this dung-heap” (Moreino).

Moreino is the editor of the literary magazines “Vārds” (Latvia) and “Балтика” (Kaliningrad, Russia) as well as editor of the series “География перевода” (Geography of Translation) by the publishers “Русский Гулливер” (Russki Gulliver, Moscow).

Publications (selection)

Там где, 2005
*См., 2008
Hanzas aukstā liesma / Холодное пламя Ганзы, 2010

Johann Reißer (1979 Regensburg) is an author and theatre-maker. His prose and poetry latches onto avant-garde tendencies and uses numerous techniques of sampling. Topics include the phenomenological, financial and structural upheavals in cities and in the country. He is currently working on the novel “Landmaschinemusik” (Farm Machine Music), which deals with people and machines in an idyllic country scene, between an eerie past and science fiction.

Reißer has been directing the theatre group “PlastikWorks” since 2009 and produces his own pieces with them, on topics of economic liberalism, colonialism and city and media development. They have been performed in various theatres and at festivals throughout the German-speaking world.

In May 2014 his doctoral dissertation, on the realignment of poetry under the figures of archeology and sampling since 1960, was published by Kulturverlag Kadmos. In 2010 Reißer received the Jury Prize at the 100Grad-Theaterfestival Berlin, in 2013 he was a City Writer in Regensburg, and in 2014 he received the Alfred Döblin Scholarship of the Academy of Arts. He lives in Berlin and Bavaria.

Publications (selected)

MAYBE ONE DAY WE'LL BE UNITED (Play), 2010
ReGame it. ReFrame it. Auf dem Retroweg nach NeuBerlin (Play), 2012
Archäologie und Sampling - Die Neuordnung der Lyrik, Kadmos 2014

Xaver Römer (born 1969 Schwerte an der Ruhr) is an author and musician. Since 2008 he was been working with Julia Trompeter on the performative project “Sprechduette”, which transfers poetic texts into songs and language, part polyphonic, part dialogic (www.sprechduette.de). In the event “Catastrophes/Forms” Römer and Trompeter will present Sprechduette, based partly on excerpts from Paul van Ostaijen’s 1921 book of poems “Occupied City”, and partly on sections from Thomas Kling’s 1999 cycle “The First World War”.

Römer has produced various radio plays for children (among others “the talking banana” SWR/RB 2000). Between 1999 and 2003 Römer was the accompanying musician for Johann König, furthermore, he was the sideman in Jancee Pornick Casino, an American-Russian-German roackabilly and surf band. In addition he has written poems and essays on poetics, which have been published in various anthologies.

In 2013 Römer completed his as yet unpublished novel “Die Wacht am Rhein” (At Watch on the Rhine). He is currently working on his second novel as well as various programming jobs.

Publications (selection)

gnip-gnop: Sprechduette (CD together with Julia Trompeter) 2008
PaPaPst (CD together with Julia Trompeter) 2010

Antony Rowland’s (born 1970 Bradford/Great Britain) engagement with the First World War began with the composition of a series of poems based on the experiences of a relative who fought in a tank regiment in Cambrai and at the Somme. Rowland’s poems sound out the culture and environment of Great Britain with a language that is sonorous and rich in allusion, and investigate the possibilities of meaning and memory in language.

The mnemonic capacity of poetry is also the topic of his 2014 investigation “Poetry as Testimony”, in which he analyses, among other topics, the First World War poems of Wilfried Owens.

Rowland is a Professor in Contemporary Literature at the University of Lincoln. In the year 2000 he received the “Eric Gregory Prize” from the Society of Authors and in 2012 the Manchester Poetry Prize. In 2011 Rowland was invited to record a reading of his poems for the “Poetry Archive”.

Publications (selected)

The Land of Green Ginger, Salt 2008
I am a Magenta Stick, Salt 2012
Poetry as Testimony, Routledge 2014

Julia Trompeter (born 1980 Siegburg), after many years of producing poetry, numerous readings and publications in magazines and anthologies, began with Xaver Römer in 2009 the performative project “Sprechduette”, which translates poetic texts into songs and language that is part polyphonic, part dialogic (sprachduette). Two CDs came out of this work in 2010 (“Gnip-Gnop” and “PaPaPst”). Pieces of these have been broadcast multiple times by SWR, have run in the Mainzer Kulturtelefon, and were performed at numerous live appearances. In the same year, Trompeter also began writing prose, and in 2011 was chosen for the 18^th Open Mike.

In the event “Catastrophes/Forms”, Römer and Trompeter will present Sprechduette, based partly on excerpts from Paul van Ostaijen’s 1921 book of poems “Occupied City”, and partly on sections from Thomas Kling’s 1999 cycle “The First World War”.

In 2012 she received a Rolf-Dieter-Brinkmann Scholarship from the city of Cologne, in 2013 she received a grant from the Art Foundation NRW. She has been working on her first novel, “Die Mittlerin”, which will be published in Autumn of 2014 through Schöffling & Co.

Trompeter received her PhD in classical philosophy and works as a researcher at Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Publications (selected)

Gnip-Gnop (CD gemeinsam mit Xaver Römer), 2010
PaPaPst (CD gemeinsam mit Xaver Römer), 2010

István Vörös (born 1964 Budapest, Hungary) is a writer and lecturer in creative writing at the PPKE University in Budapest.

His verse novel “Heidegger as Post Office Clerk” is an existential epic and an archaic, fantastical journey into the beyond. The text begins at the time of the First World War, when the famous philosopher had to perform his national service in postal censorship and weather observation.

Vörös has published 13 books of poetry to date, four short story collections, two novels and three books of essays. Apart from that, he has published two books of theatre pieces. His work is often about (self-) assurance, about probing supposedly self-evident facts, and questions of identity in the world.

Vörös translates poetry from Czech, German, English and Polish. His first German book “Die leere Grapefruit” was published by Edition Korrespondenzen. In 2008 he published a book of poems in German and Czech, in 2009 a collection of short stories in Bulgarian.

In 1998 Vörös received the Füst Milan Pris and the Tibor Déry Prize, in 2000 the Vilenca Prize, 2003 the Hubert Burda Prize and in 2005 the Premia Bohemica Prize. In 2006 he received a scholarship from the DAAD Artist Program in Berlin. Vörös lives in Budapest.

Publications (selected)

Die leere Grapefruit, Edition Korrespondenzen 2004
Heidegger als Postbeamter, Edition Korrespondenzen 2008