Haus für Poesie

Ghayath Almadhoun (born in Damascus in 1979) is a Palestinian poet and film maker. He was born in a Palestinian refugee camp and studied Arabic Literature at the University of Damascus. He has published three volumes of verse in Arabic, the most recent of which was published in Beirut in 2014. In 2008 Almadhoun emigrated to Sweden where he now lives and works. He has collaborated with Swedish poet Marie Silkeberg on two books of poetry, most recently Till Damaskus. They have also produced several poetry films together. Ghayath Almadhoun’s poems have been translated into several languages including Swedish, German, Dutch, Greek, Slovenian, Italian, English, French, Danish and Chinese.

Eva Geulen (born in Bergneustadt in 1962) is the Director of the Berlin Centre for Literary and Cultural Research and Professor of the History of Culture and Knowledge at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She studied in Freiburg, then subsequently in Baltimore, where she gained her PhD in 1989. Teaching positions at Stanford University, the University of Rochester and New York University (1989–2003) were followed by professorships for Modern German Literature at the University of Bonn (2003–2012) and the University of Frankfurt (2012–2015). Her main publications include Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung (Junius 2005), Das Ende der Kunst. Lesarten eines Gerüchts nach Hegel (Suhrkamp 2002) and Worthörig wider Willen (Iudicium 1992). Eva Geulen is co-editor of the journal Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie. Her main areas of research are literature and philosophy from the 18th Century to the present, educational discourses in 1800 and 1900, and Goethe’s morphology and its reception in the 20th Century.

Hammoud Hamoud (born in Aleppo in 1982) is a writer and Islamic scholar in the areas of the history of early Islamic ideas and theology and contemporary Islamism and fundamentalism. He studied Islamic law at the University of Damascus and is the editor of several books, studies and essays. Articles by Hammoud Hamoud have been published in Arabic-language journals such as Al-Hayat and Al-Mustaqbal as well as in magazines such as Al-Adab and Al-Meshkat. Scholarly publications by the author have been published by research institutes such as Al-Mesbar Studies & Research Center and Al-Bousleh. He has been living in Berlin for one year.

Alfrun Kliems (born in Wriezen, Brandenburg in 1969) studied Russian and Bohemian Studies and has been Professor for West Slavic Literatures and Cultures at the Humboldt University in Berlin since 2012. Her main areas of research include exile and migration in the literatures of eastern central Europe and changes of language, transculturality and underground art in eastern central Europe. From 1998–2001 Alfrun Kliems was a member of the project Eastern Central European Exile Literatures at the Leipzig Humanities Centre for the History and Culture of Eastern Central Europe. She has written or edited several books and articles on the topic of exile, including Im Stummland. Zum Exilwerk von Libuše Moníková, Jiří Gruša und Ota Filip (Peter Lang Verlag 2002) sowie Grundbegriffe und Autoren ostmitteleuropäischer Exilliteraturen 1945–1989 (Franz Steiner Verlag 2004).

Hannah Markus (born in Göttingen in 1980) has been a research assistant on the project Poetologie und jüdische Philosophie – Gershom Scholem Edition at the Berlin Centre for Literary and Cultural Research since January 2014. Her main interests include the history of poetry since 1945 and editorial text genesis, which is reflected in her work on among other things text genesis in the poetry of Thomas Brasch and in her thesis Ilse Aichingers Lyrik. Das gedruckte Werk und die Handschriften (de Gruyter 2015). She co-edits the journal Berliner Hefte zur Geschichte des literarischen Lebens with Roland Berbig.

Melanie Möller (born in Bielefeld  in 1972) has been the Professor for Classical Philology focussing on Latin Studies at the Berlin Free University since August 2015. Her main areas of research interest include the literature of the Late Roman Republic and the Augustan period, and the literary theiory and reception of ancient literature. Most recently she has edited Prometheus gibt nicht auf. Antike Welt und modernes Leben in Hans Blumenbergs Philosophie (Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2015).

Fiston Mwanza Mujila (born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1981) studied Literature and Human Sciences at the University of Lubumbashi. He emigrated to Graz, where he now lives and is working for his PhD on African literature. His poems, prose works and plays are often reactions to the political unrest following Congolese independence and its effects on everyday life For his debut novel Tram 83 he was awarded the 2014 French Voices fellowship and the Grand Prix du Premier Roman of the Société des gens de lettres. The novel was also shortlisted for the Prix du Monde. In 2008 Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s book of verse Poèmes et rêvasseries was published. In 2009 he won the Gold Medal for Literature at the 6th Francophone Festival in Beirut, and in 2010 a prize for the best play script at the Mainz Staatstheater.

Publications:
Et les moustiques sont des fruits à pépins. Lansman 2015
Kin kiesse, les écritures congolaises.Éditions Sépia 2015
Tram 83. Éditions Métailié 2014
Poèmes et rêvasseries. Linkgua Ediciones 2008

Rasha Omran (born in Tartus, Syria in 1964) was expelled from the country because of her involvement in opposition to the Assad regime and currently lives in Cairo. The daughter of Syrian poet Mohammad Omran, she is one of her country’s most important poets. In the late 90s she founded the Al-Sindiyan literary and cultural festival in her home city, and was its director for 16 years. In 2009 she edited an anthology of contemporary Syrian verse. She has so far published five books of verse and a selection in Swedish. In her texts, Rasha Omran writes about history leaking from archives of past crimes, about body parts sunk in rivers like fish food and about poets who keep giggling despite all the bitterness. She also writes weekly columns for Arabic-language newspapers and media

Publications (selection):
بانوراما الموت والوحشة(Panorama of Death and Solitude). Poems. Dar Non 2014
معطف أحمر فارغ(An Empty Red Coat). Poems. Syrian Culture Ministry 2009
ظلك الممتد في أقصى حنيني(Your Shadow, Cast in my Utter Yearning). Poems. Al Tanweer 2003
كأن منفاي جسدي(As though my Exile my Body). Poems. Dar Arwad 1999
وجع له شكل الحياة(Pain in the Form of Life). Poems. Dar Arwad 1997

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

Falko Schmieder (born in Freiberg in 1970) studied Communications Sciences, Political Science, Sociology and Philosophy at the Dresden Technical University, at the Humboldt University in Berlin and at the Berlin Free University. In 2004 he gained his PhD at the FU Berlin. Since 2005 he has been a research assistant in the research project Theory and Concept of an Inter-disciplinary History of Concepts in the Berlin Centre for Literary and Cultural Research. From 2008 to 2009 Falko Schmieder was a guest professor in the history of communications and media cultures at the FU Berlin, and in 2013 he was a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota. His research interests are the history of concepts and historical semantics, modern theories and concepts of time.

Martin Treml (born in Linz in 1959) studied Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, Philosophy and History of Art at the University of Vienna and the Berlin Free University. Since 2000 he has worked at the Berlin Centre for Literary and Cultural Research, currently as head of the research projects Poetology and Jewish Philosophy (together with S. Weigel) and Philosophy of Religion after 1945. His research interests include theory of and figures in Western religions, cultural and literary history of Jews in Germany since 1700 and the ancient world and its reception. Most recently he has edited the volumes Grenzgänger der Religionskulturen. Kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zu Gegenwart und Religion der Märtyrer (ed. with S. Horsch, Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2011) and Die Ordnung pluraler Kulturen. Figurationen europäischer Kulturgeschichte, vom Osten her gesehen (ed. with Z. Andronikashvili, Kulturverlag Kadmos 2014).