Haus für Poesie

He is the “megastar of the megacities”, as The Guardian wrote, a “Brazilian hip-hop superstar” (Radio Eins): the rapper, composer and poet of the metropolis, Criolo from São Paulo.

With his Album “Nó na Orelha” (Knot in the Ear), originally released online as a free download, an astounding career began: the MC from the favelas of the city of millions, with his socially critical, political lyrics, has been equally celebrated by public and critics alike. He plays in the stadiums of the country, tours through Latin America and Europe, appeared at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark and in Central Park in New York. Various concerts were released as DVDs and downloads. Multiple collaborations with the music greats of Brazil are to follow.

Criolo’s parents came to São Paulo from the poor north of the country, landing on the city’s outskirts, in the favela das Imbuias. Criolo worked in his youth in a supermarket, sold clothes in the doorways of apartment blocks. Later he gave art classes for school children, and worked for seven years as a street-worker with at-risk youth.

Today Criolo is known right throughout Brazilian society. When he raps about poverty, about police violence, drug abuse, everyday racism and the injustice of a booming economy out of the reach of many, people from every stratum of society listen in.

At the poesiefestival berlin 2014, Criolo will appear for just the second time in Germany, making two appearances, with exclusive, reduced sets, which will concentrate completely on his lyrics.

 

Discography

Albums:

Ainda Há Tempo (2006)

Nó Na Orelha (2011)

Singles:

Ainda Há Tempo (2006)

Subirusdoistiozin (2010)

Duas De Cinco (2013)

DVDs:

Criolo Doido Live in SP (2010)

Criolo & Emicida ao Vivo (2013)

Nó Na Orelha ao Vivo no Circo Voador (2013)

Criolo & Emicida ao Vivo (2013)

Nó Na Orelha ao Vivo no Circo Voador (2013)

Tishani Doshi (born 1975, Madras, India) is an Indian poet, journalist and dancer. The daughter of a Welsh mother and a Gujarati father, she won the Eric Gregory Prize in 2001. With her first volume of poetry, “Countries of the Body” she won the 2006 Forward Poetry Prize. In 2006 she took part in the Hay Festival, and in 2007 at the Hay Festival in Cartagena. Her first novel “The Pleasure Seekers” came out in 2010 through Bloomsbury, and made the 2011 Orange Prize Longlist, as well as the shortlist for The Hindu Best Fiction Award. In her poems, Tishani Doshi deals critically with issues of being a woman, aging, transsexuality, loss and violence.

Publications

Everything begins elsewhere, Copper Canyon 2013
The Pleasure Seekers, Bloomsbury Publishing 2010 (the German translation, Die Glückssucher, was published by Berlin Verlag, 2010)

Pauline Füg and Tobias Heyel (Würzburg/Stuttgart) have been performing their spoken word poetry in duet as the poetry team Großraumdichten since 2005, and count in this genre as one of the most experienced slam teams in the country. They play synchronized and time-delayed with sentences. Sometimes with electronic music, sometimes without, but always highly dynamic. Observations may be first of all front and centre, then wordplay, until arriving at the question, whether we shouldn’t grow slower than darkness, when such a big part of humanity wants to be faster than light.

They were winners of the “Bremer Netzresidenz” and the “3-Sat-Poetry Clip” competitions. In 2009 they released the CD “an grauzonen vorbei” (passing by grey zones) with Sprechstation-Verlag.

Publications

an grauzonen vorbei (CD), Sprechstation-Verlag 2009

Julian Heun (b. 1989 in Berlin) is a writer, slam poet and show host from Berlin-Konradshöhe. He writes and speaks in the space between artful humour and humorous art. Three times German-language Poetry Slam Champion, he works for Fritz Radio and the creative agency DOJO. He has been a feature of poetry slams and cabaret stages since 2007 and has won more than ten prizes. He has been a guest of the Goethe Institute at international poetry festivals in Europe, Africa and South and North America. Julian Heun studied Comparative Literature and German, while also writing for the Bildzeitung newspaper and the satiric TV show Neo Magazin Royale. In 2013 his first novel, Strawberry Fields Berlin, was published by Rowohlt. In addition he organises and hosts with the “Edellauchs” Berlin’s biggest poetry slams in the Ritter Butzke, the Volksbühne theatre and the Strandbad as well as the 2019 German-language Poetry Slam Championships.

Publications:

Strawberry Fields Berlin. Roman, Rowohlt, Reinbek 2014

Awards:

German-Language Poetry Slam Champion (U20) 2007

Winner Slam Tour with Kuttner 2008

Berlin Poetry Slam Champion 2009

Goldener Stuttgarter Besen, 2010

Audience Award Stuttgarter Besen 2010

Herborner Schlumpeweck 2011

Berlin Poetry Slam Champion 2011

German-Language Poetry Slam Champion (Team) 2013

German-Language Poetry Slam Champion (Team) 2017

Berlin Poetry Slam Champion 2019

Rhythmic beatbox interludes mix with threads of dialogue, prosaic passages and poem verses. Dalibor Marković (born 1975, Frankfurt/Main) makes language ring with the virtuosity of a jazz musician. In doing this, his perspectives are unusual and his materials are striking. “In terms of content there are no clear lines”, says Marković. “It is more a scratching with hand and foot through the dregs of society. With that, a little bit of dirt gets stuck in your shoe or under your fingernails. This dirt is examined in close detail. But not entirely without humour.”

The slam poet from Frankfurt is a co-founder of the spoken word collective WordAlert, and has read in São Paulo, Abu Dhabi, Tashkent and New Delhi. Previous publications include the poetry collections “Schulwege. So Gedichten” and “Bühnenstücke 1”, as well as the USB stick “Bühnenstück 1”. Marković lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.

 

Publications

Schulwege – so Gedichten (Ways to School – Like, poems), James & Warrington 2006
Bühnenstücke 1 (Stage pieces 1), James & Warrington 2011
Bühnenstick 1, James & Warrington 2011

The laugh of the “2009 African Slam Queen” is contagious. Wanjiku Mwaurah’s (born 1989, Nairobi/Kenya) mode of expression combines simplicity and precision at the same time. “Poetic inspiration from life’s simplicity” is her chosen motto. As hard as the message of the poem may be, the listener cannot pull herself away from Wanjiku’s performance.

Her book “The Flow of My Soul” forms a bridge between spoken word and reflections on times past. At the moment she is writing theatre pieces and TV series, is on tour with her stage appearances and leads workshops.

Her engagement goes beyond poetry; she participated as a mentor for aspiring spoken word artists in a campaign by the Kenyan Cerebral Palsy Society. She has performed with some of the leading African poets such as Mphutlane Wa Bofelo, Qbibo Intalektual (Swaziland) und Napo Masheane (South Africa). Wanjiku Mwaurah has been a guest at the Poetry Spot Festival, Jukwaani Festival (2009), Sawa Sawa Festival (2011), SAMOSA Festival (2012), Story Moja Hay Festival (2012) and SPOKEN WOR:L:DS Berlin-Nairobi (2014). 

(de)

Agnessan Alain Serges (*1987 Abidjan, Elfenbeinküste) ist ein junger Schriftsteller, der bereits den Erzählband „Quelques danses avec la mort“ veröffentlichen konnte. Er ist Doktorand der Literaturwissenschaft und hat seine Hingabe zum Comic zum Wahlfach gemacht. Spoken Word ist eine weitere und besonders große Leidenschaft des Künstlers, die ihn auf die Bühnen der Elfenbeinküste zieht.

Veröffentlichungen

Quelques danses avec la mort“ - Ein paar Tanzschritte mit dem Tod, 2013

With Temye Tesfu there are echoes of Allen Ginsberg and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, but above all he has a voice, such as we haven’t yet heard: in love with language and rhythmically overflowing, but image-sharp. Tesfu knows where he wants to go. With his spoken word ensemble Allen Earnstyzz he creates highly dynamic stage pieces: mosaics of rhyme-staccato with almost musical interludes and sprinklings of humour. Allen Earnstyzz were, among other things, guests in Chicago in order to work up a bilingual performance with the Speak Easy Ensemble. Together with the illustrator Theresa Hahl and the illustrator Mehrdad Zaeri, Tesfu developed the live radio play “Die Tonbänder des Ignaz Euling”, which sketches out the panorama of a village in blank verse. He is the two-time runner-up in the German-speaking Poetry Slam (team category), works as a workshop facilitator and organizes slam evenings.

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966, Johannesburg, South Africa), daughter of an Australian mother and a Ghanaian father, was adopted into a white family in Apartheid South Africa, a fact she first learnt at the age of 20.

“I felt as if the colonised and the coloniser were fighting each other inside my brain”, she says in an interview. But also: “as a mixed race African and adoptee I feel, paradoxically, oppressed and completely free”.

Sharpened through this paradoxical biography, her work raises questions of ethnic heritage, of exclusion and identity, in the most urgent and personal way. Her poems are enraged and melancholic, but also funny, and are often ironically self-reflexive in their social criticism: “Freedom Songs” that are easy neither on themselves nor the reader.

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers studied journalism in Grahamstown, and in the late 90s studied acting in Paris. She spent some time in Los Angeles before returning to Johannesburg, where she did street theatre and completed a screenplay. Since then she has written numerous scripts for TV series, and in 2005 also wrote a play, “Where the Children Live”.

In 2006 her first book of poetry was published, “Taller than Buildings”, and in 2010 she followed up with “The Everyday Wife”. In 2009 she was Writer in Residence at the Villa Vollezele in Belgium, and in 2011, along with other awards, received the South African Literary Award.

 

Publications

Taller Than Buildings, Centre for the Book 2006
The Everyday Wife, Modjaji Books 2010

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