19th poesiefestival berlin: Poetry Is Music
28.03.2018
The 19th poesiefestival berlin Values Verse Art will be focussing on ways in which poetry and music come together. Authors will be taking the stage with musicians in a variety of events.
Robert Forster, the dandyish front man of the Australian band The Go-Betweens talks about and sings from his work in a concert talk. Poet Søren Ulrik Thomsen in collaboration with the Det Glemte Kvarter Orchester from Copenhagen conjures on to the stage a wide-ranging synthesis of words and music between Jazz, pop and avant-garde. Poet, novelist and sound poet Michael Lentz and his band perform a kind of poetic post free Jazz. Speech acts and unknown sound objects are distilled into “sound writing” in Poets’ Evening #5 featuring Christian Schloyer and his Hyperschallkunstflugzeugen – ‘hyper-sound-art-planes’. And the Austrian
literary shooting star Fiston Mwanza Mujila together with thev German-
Iranian Jazz singer Cymin Samawatie invite us to a Jazz dialogue where texts, instruments and song create a multilingual exchange.
Save the Date!
Poets and their Bands I
Sunday, 27 May 2018, 9 pm
With Søren Ulrik Thomsen (Denmark), poet, and the Orchester Det Glemte Kvarter (Denmark)
The first Poets and their Bands evening features poet Søren Ulrik Thomsen with the six-piece Orchester Det Glemte Kvarter from Copenhagen. Their range extends from almost transparent sound landscapes to full-throttle poetry funk – a wide-ranging synthesis of words and music between Jazz, pop and avant-garde. Poems have never been so danceable.
The concert Poets and their Bands I is taking place with the kind support of the Danish Arts Foundation and the Royal Danish Embassy, Berlin.
Poets and their Bands II
Monday, 28 May 2018, 9.30 pm
With Michael Lentz (Germany), poet | Gunnar Geisse (Germany), guitar | Michael Wertmüller (Germany), percussion
Michael Lentz is known not only as a poet, novelist and sound poet, but also as a performer with wild verbal dexterity. He and his band perform a mix of Dada classics and their own compositions. Voice, poem and music, acoustic and electric, merge when Lentz and band tread the boundaries of word and sound, of tenderness and noise. A kind of poetic post Jazz – technical virtuosity with one ear for tradition and the other right up to the minute.
Poets‘ Evening # 5: Christian Schloyer
Hyperschallkunstflugzeugen (Hyper-Sound-Art-Planes)
Performance
Wednesday, 30 May 2018, 9.30 pm
With Michael Ammann (Germany), sound artist | Swantje Lichtenstein (Germany), text-sound poet | Christian Schloyer (Germany), poet, sound artist | Kinga Tóth (Hungary), (sound-) poetry illustrator
“Carte Blanche” for this year’s Poets‘ Evening at the poesiefestival berlin has been given to Christian Schloyer. He promises an “aerial number with double-decker“ with poetry and electro-acoustic sound, a synaesthesic “image massacre that pulls your inner eye down over your ears”. Four artists meet here for the first time and improvise absolutely in the moment. “Sound protocollages” are distilled into “instant poetry”, speech acts and unknown sound objects into “sound writing”. The audience moves around in a quadrophonic sound environment – or meditates on field beds.
Poets‘ Evening # 5: Christian Schloyer Hyperschallkunstflugzeugen is taking place with the kind support of the State Office for Refugee Affairs.
Fiston and friends
Heimat, Heimat
Thursday, 31 May, 8 pm
With Denis Abrahams (Germany), presenter, actor | Ben Kraef (Germany), saxophone | Marco Mingarelli (Italy), percussion | Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Congo and Austria), author | Cymin Samawatie (Germany), author, singer-songwriter | Fyodor Stepanov (Russia), double bass
Fiston Mwanza Mujila came from the Congo as a refugee and now lives in Austria where he is literature’s new shooting star. For this evening he is inviting artists and musicians to join him for a Jazz dialogue in which texts, instruments and song meet in a multilingual exchange. Music and poetry are world langauges that overcome borders and are understood beyond cultural regions. For people taking flight as refugees or in exile they are also spaces of freedom as much as of refuge and homeland. The performance approaches the idea of “Heimat” (home) with musical variations. Fiston Mwanza Mujila and the German-Iranian Jazz singer Cymin Samawatie enter into performative dialogue with the musicians while Denis Abrahams performs as “interpreter” with Fiston in German and French.
Fiston and friends – Heimat, Heimat is taking place with the kind support of the Austrian Culture Forum Berlin.
Robert Forster: Learning to Burn
A concert talk
Thursday, 31 May, 9.30 pm
With Robert Forster (Australia), singer-songwriter
Host: Christine Heise (Germany), music journalist
If we didn’t know before, we do now – since Bob Dylan was given the Nobel Prize for Literature it’s clear that lyrics must be poetry and songwriters are authors. Once again, the poesiefestival berlin is inviting an important representative of the genre to present his work in an environment of contemporary poetry.
Robert Forster is – as paradoxical as it sounds – a dandy of understatement. Together with Grant McLennan and Belinda “Lindy” Morrison he was the creative core of the band The Go-Betweens, formed in 1977. They never had that big top ten hit, but what they did produce were a string of nearly perfect albums. At the time Forster played the role of the dandyish front man (sometimes in a dress, sometimes in a poncho), at the same time living and sending up the pop star dream. His musical contemporary Nick Cave has called him “the truest and strangest poet of his generation”. The fame of the band still lives on – every other band approaching the top of the Pitchfork Scale either cites The Go-Betweens as an influence or sounds like them.
Forster has also released a string of solo albums since the late 1980s, most recently the acclaimed Songs to Play (2015). He demonstrates that no more than four chords are needed to write songs that are at the same time contemporary and timeless. Following the early death of his partner-in-crime McLennan Forster wrote his memoirs, Grant & I. It is one of the most significant books to be written in recent years about pop music beside Mark E. Smith’s Renegade and Morrissey’s Autobiography.
In this concert talk Robert Forster talks to Christine Heise about his work and sings from it.
The Concert Talk: Robert Forster: Learning to Burn is taking place with the kind support of The Mandala Hotel and ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen.
Speichern
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For enquiries and information:
Haus für Poesie
Mira Lina Simon
Press & Publicity
Tel: 030. 48 52 45 24
E-Mail: presse@haus-fuer-poesie.org
The 19th poesiefestival berlin is a project by the Haus für Poesie in co-operation with the Academy of Arts and acknowledges the kind support of the Capital Cultural Fund and Maritim proArte Hotel Berlin, and is presented by kulturradio rbb, tip Berlin, taz, BÜCHERmagazin and Deutschlandfunk Kultur.