Hendrik Jackson

Hendrik Jackson was born in Düsseldorf in 1971. His poems follow the traces of apparently unnoticed processes, making visible what perhaps only happens behind closed eyelids, in dream, memory and imagination. As well as working as a poet. essayist and translator, mainly from the Russian, Jackson edits the web portal www.lyrikkritik.de. He is also co-organiser of the literary series Parlandopark, where such writers as Marte Huke, Monika Rinck, Christian Filips and Steffen Popp have read and discussed their work.

Hendrik Jackson grew up in Münster (Westphalia) and studied Film Studies, Slavic Studies and Philsophy in Berlin, where he lives as a freelance writer and translator. His prizes include the Wolfgang Weyrauch Promotion Prize in 2005 and the Promotion Prize of the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize of the City of Bad Homburg in2008. 

Publications (a selection):

Im Innern der zerbrechenden Schale. Poetik und Pastichen (kookbooks 2007)
Dunkelströme. Gedichte (kookbooks 2006)
Im Licht der Prophezeiungen (kookbooks 2012)

Jyrki Kiiskinen

Foto: Raisa Karjalainen

Jyrki Kiiskinen (*1963 Helsinki, Finnland) ist eine der zentralen Figuren der finnischen Literatur und an vielen Fronten aktiv: Kiiskinen ist Lyriker, Kinderbuchautor und Übersetzer u.a. von Haruki Murakami, Octavio Paz und Isaac Asimov. Er hat den “Club der lebenden Dichter” mitgegründet und kreatives Schreiben unterrichtet. In seinen Gedichten setzt er sich mit aktuellen politischen Themen auseinander. Sein Debüt als Dichter gab Kiiskinen 1989, bisher sind sechs Gedichtbände und drei Romane von ihm erschienen. Er hat zahlreiche Preise erhalten, darunter den Eino-Leino-Preis und den Tanssiva-Karhu-Preis für Poesie. Seine Texte wurden in rund 20 Sprachen übersetzt.

Veröffentlichungen (Auswahl):

Runoilija vaaran rinteellä (Dichter am Hang der Gefahr) (Art House 1989) 
Sillä ei ole nimeä (Das hat keinen Namen) (Art House 1990) 
Suomies (Sumpfmann) (Tammi 1994)
Kaamos (Polarnacht) (Tammi 1997) 
Jänis ja Vanki (Hase und Gefangener) (Tammi 2000)
Menopaluu (Hin und zurück) (Tammi 2006)

 

Norbert Lange

Norbert Lange was born in Gdynia, Poland, in 1978 and came to Germany with his parents in the 1980s, where he grew up in the Rhineland. He studies Art History, Philosophy and Jewish Studies in Berlin, then Literature at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. In his poems he seeks an “intensive exchange with the voices of the poetic tradition and the poetic energies of poetic predecessors. What emerges is enormous poetic friction heat” (Michael Braun).

Since 2008 Norbert Lange has been living in Berlin. He is a founder member of the ‘Lyrikknappschaft Schöneberg’ and was editor of the trilingual literary magazine radar. In 2009 and 2010 he led the poetry chat in eMultipoetry, a European project for collectively writing poems. 

Publications (a selection):

Rauhfasern. Gedichte (Lyrikedition 2000)
Das Geschriebene mit der Schreibhand. Aufsätze (Reinecke & Voß 2010)    
Das Schiefe, das Harte und das Gemalene. Gedichte (luxbooks 2012)

Teemu Manninen

Foto: Leena Lahti

Teemu Manninen, born in Espoo, Finland, in 1977, likes to mix the past and the future, and there are not just dragons, elves and superheroes in his work, but he also likes to write his poems in sonnet form. He has published five collections of poems since 2994, and he also writes articles for Finnish and Swedish literary journals. He currently works as, among other things, a publisher’s editor for Poesia Verlag and performs with the art-sound collective Linnunlaulupuu (”birdsong-tree”). Manninen describes himself as a literary activist.

Publications (a selection):

Paha äiti (The evil mother) (Poesia 2012) 
Säkeitä (Verses) (ntamo 2010) 
Futurama (poEsia 2010)
Lohikäärmeen poika (The Son of the Dragon) (Tammi 2007)
Turistina täällä (Here as a tourist) (Tammi 2004)

Kerstin Preiwuß

foto: gezett.de

Kerstin Preiwuß was born in Lübz in 1980 and manages, according to Philip Kovce writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, to “lead language to the points of its birth and death between sound and silence.” Poet Monika Rinck finds in her poems a “complexity in things that are simply said, although the simplicity, like free style, is the hardest to achieve.”

Initially, Kerstin Preiwuß studied German, Philosophy and Psychology, later, until 2009, at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig, where she now lives and co-edits the literary journal Edit. Among other distinctions she has won the Working Scholarship of the German Literature Fund (2010) and the 2012 Mondseer Poetry Prize (2012). 

Publications (a selection):

Nachricht von neuen Sternen (Connewitzer Verlagsbuchhandlung 2006)
Rede (Suhrkamp 2012)

Thomas Rosenlöcher

Thomas Rosenlöcher Foto: gezett.de

Thomas Rosenlöcher was born in Dresden in 1947 and is the author of many books of poems, essays, travel books and children’s books. He has described the Saxon soul and the upheavals in the east of Germany with a fine sense of irony. Rosenlöcher’s poetry is marked by observations of the natural world and devotion in small things. “The power of his imagery, which is influenced by irony as much as serenity and inquisitive seriousness, allows no comfort even in the idyll,” according to the FAZ.

Rosenlöcher studied business management and worked as a labour economist before studying at the Literature Institute in Leipzig from 1976 to 1979. Rosenlöcher’s prizes include the 1999  Friedrich Hölderlin Prize of the City of Tübingen and the 2002 Art Prize of the City of Dresden. In 2005 he was a guest of the Villa Massimo in Rome.

 

Publications (a selection):

Ich sitze in Sachsen und schau in den Schnee. 77 Gedichte. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1998
Liebst Du mich, ich liebe Dich. Geschichten zum Vorlesen. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt/Leipzig 2002
Wie ich in Ludwig Richters Brautzug verschwand. Zwei Dresdner Erzählungen. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt/Leipzig 2005
Das Flockenkarussell. Blüten-Engel-Schnee-Gedichte. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt/Leipzig 2007,
Der Mann, der noch an den Klapperstorch glaubte. Mit Bildern von Maja Bohn. Hinstorff, Rostock 2007,
Der Mann, der lieber tot sein wollte. Illustriert von Jacky Gleich. Hinstorff, Rostock 2010

Andre Rudolph

Foto: Peter Löffelholz

About Andre Rudolph, born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1975, the jury for the Meran Poetry Prize, which he won in 2010, said, “A lyrical voice full of unfathomable lightness and self-ironic despair. It catches precise echoes of our present, plays with its technical connections and produces a sound picture that it thoroughly of today. The texts entrance the reader with their melancholic humour and wit.”

Rudolph, who was born in Warsaw and grew up in Leipzig, studied German, Philosophy and Slavic Studies. As well as writing his own texts he is a prominent translator of Polish poetry, including the work of Krzysztof Siwczyk, Tadeusz Dabrowski and Adam Wiedemann (Poesiefestival Berlin 2009). Among other awards he won the 2011 Wolfgang Weyrauch Promotion Prize in Darmstadt in 2011.

Publications (a selection):

fluglärm über den palästen unsrer restinnerlichkeit (luxbooks 2009)
confessional poetry (luxbooks 2012)

Aki Salmela

Foto: Pertti Nisonen

Aki Salmela, born in Vantaa, Finland, in 1976, plays the postmodern game of forms with great enjoyment and consummate skill, combining tradition and the new in his poems, which he writes in Finnish and Engilsh and a combination of the two; in Word in Progress he experiments with “Xinglish”:

”Funny no one paid sidewalkany attentacrossthion, I thong. lt consoliugh me, it fel me good.”

As a translator, Aki Salmela has translated, among other things, the work of John Ashbery, Charles Simic and Gertrude Stein into Finnish. For his poetry he has been awarded the Kalevi Jäntti Prize and the Tanssiva Karhu Prize.

Publications (a selection):

Sanomattomia lehtiä (Timeless writings) (Tammi, 2004)
Leikitään kotia (Playing at home) (Tammi, 2005)
Word in Progress (ntamo, 2007)
Tyhjyyden ympärillä (Around emptiness) (Tammi, 2008)
Yhtä ja samaa (One and the same) (Tammi, 2009)
Vanitas (Tammi, 2012) 

Kathrin Schmidt

Foto: Wolfgang Gebhardt

Kathrin Schmidt was born in Gotha, Germany, in 1958. Her poems are marked by strict metrics, powerful, sensuous language and rich wordplay. Her novels, too, show her to be a powerful writer with great imagination, and have been compared by critics with early Günter Grass and Irmtraud Morgner.

Schmidt initially worked as a child psychologist in East Berlin. In 1986 she attended a special course at the Leipzig Literature Institute and shortly afterwards – after a slim volume in the renowned ‘Poesiealbum’ series – published her first collection of poems, Ein Engel fliegt durch die Tapetenfabrik. She became known especially for her fourth novel, with autobiographical elements, Du stirbst nicht, for which she won the German Book Prize in 2009. She has won many other prizes as well including the 1988 Anna Seghers Prize, the 1993 Leonce und Lena Prize, the 1994 Meran Poetry Prize and the 2010 German Critics’ Prize. 

Publications (a selection):

Flußbild mit Engel. Gedichte (Suhrkamp 1995)
Die Gunnar-Lennefsen-Expedition (Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1998)
Go-In der Belladonnen. Gedichte (Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2000)
Koenigs Kinder (Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2002)
Seebachs schwarze Katzen (Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2005)
Du stirbst nicht (Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2009)
Finito. Schwamm drüber. Erzählungen (Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2011) 

Helena Sinervo

Foto: Katja Tolvanen

Helena Sinervo was born in Tampere, Finland, in 1961 and studied music and supported herself as a piano teacher before turning to literature, first as a literature student in Helsinki and in Paris, then later as a poet and novelist. Her first novel, a fictionalised biography of the Finnish poet Eeva-Liisa Manner, won the renowned Finlandia Prize. Her poetry is inspired and influenced by among other things science and scientific observations, classical mythology and the relationship between humans and nature. A multitude of voices mingle in her poetry; a traditional one, influenced by Finland’s national epic Kalevala, follows that of a busy urban dweller. Sinervo is also a translator from English and French, of writers including Elizabeth Bishop and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Publications (a selection):

Sininen Anglia (The Blue Anglia) (WSOY 1994)
Ihmisen kaltainen (Human-like) (WSOY 2000)
Runoilijan talossa (In the Poet’s House) (WSOY 2004)
Tykistönkadun päiväperho (The Butterfly of Artillery Street) (WSOY 2009)
Väärän lajin laulut (Songs of the Wrong Kind) (WSOY 2010) 

Olli Sinivaara

Foto: Heini Lehvaeslaiho

Born in Tampere, Finland, in 1980, Olli Sinivaara’s poetry combines Finnish modernism and Frencht traditions, creating powerful images of Nordic nature. His style has been described by critics as “visual noise” and “pure Baroque”. For his second collection of poems, Palava maa, he was awarded the prestigious Kalevi Jäntti Prize for young writers.

Sinivaara has translated René Girard and Jean Baudrillard and others into Finnish. He writes columns and reviews. From 2008-2009 he was chief editor of the literary journal Nuori Voima.

Publications (a selection):

Hiililiekki (Coal Flames) (Teos 2005) 
Palava maa (The Burning Land) (Teos 2007)
Valonhetki (Moment of Light) (Teos 2009) 
Lokakuun päivä (One Day in October) (Teos 2012) 

Henriikka Tavi

Foto: Leena Lahti

Henriikka Tavis was born in Vehkalahti, Finland, in 1978. Her first collection of poetry, Esim. Esa (2007) was awarded the Helsingin Sanomat Prize for the best literary debut of the year and was praised by the jury as “playful text-bashing”. For Toivo (Hope, 2011) she received the Kalevi Jäntti Prize and the Tanssiva Karhu Prize for Poetry. Tavi experiments on every level. In 2012 she tried to earn enough as a poet so as not to fall below the state’s official poverty line of € 1000 per month – which mean tht she had to publish twelcve books of poetry in a year. Henriikka Tavi uses very different themes as starting points for her poetry. She writes poems that are inspired as much by chilfren’s nursery rhymes as by Finnish history, using repetition, playing with typography, using half-words and mastering fast rhythms in an enviable way.

Tavi studied Philosophy, Literature and Aesthetics in Helsinki and currently works as an editor at the journal Tuli&Savu (Fire & Smoke).

Publications (a selection):

Esim. Esa (Teos 2007)
Sanakirja (Dictionary) (Poesia 2010)
Toivo (Hope) (Teos 2011)
12 (Poesia 2012-2013)