Haus für Poesie

Writer and painter Breyten Breytenbach was born in Bonnievale, South Africa, in 1939. He left his homeland in 1959 to study in Paris, where he became an active opponent of apartheid. By marrying a Frenchwoman of Vietnamese origin be violated the South African regime’s race laws and he was forbidden to return. In 1975 he went back to South Africa on a false passport but was betrayed and arrested and spent the next seven years in prison as a terrorist. On his release he returned to Paris and took French citizenship. Writing became a strategy for survival for Breytenbach while he was in prison. His poetry is rich in wordplay, irony and political references. Since the 1960s he has published many books of verse and novels, mainly in English.

Breytenbach isa Chevalier of the French Légion d’Honneur and has received many prizes both for his verse and his prose his work. He has taught in various universities in South Africa and the United States and is a co-founder of the Gorée Institute in Dakar, Senegal, which is devoted to the promotion of African art and culture. He lives in Catalonia, Paris and Gorée.

Publications (a selection):

Nine Landscapes of our Times Bequeathed to a Beloved (Nege landskappe van ons tye bemaak aan `n beminde), Groenkloof, 1993
The Handful of Feathers (Die hand vol vere), Cape Town, 1995 (Selected poems)
The Remains. An Elegy (Oorblyfsels. ´n Roudig), Cape Town, 1997
Paper Flower (Papierblom), Cape Town, 1998
Iron Cow Blues (Ysterkoei-blues), Cape Town, 2001 (Collected poems 1964-1975)
Lady One: Of Love and other Poems, New York, 2002
The undanced dance. Prison poetry 1975 - 1983 (Die ongedanste dans. Gevangenisgedigte 1975 - 1983), Cape Town, 2005
the windcatcher (die windvanger), Cape Town, 2007
Voice Over: A Nomadic Conversation with Mahmoud Darwish, Archipelago Books, 2009
"Catalects (artefacts for the slow uses of dying) ("Katalekte (artefakte vir die stadige gebruike van doodgaan))", Cape Town, Human & Rousseau, 2012

Poet, translator and essayist Durs Grünbein was born in Dresden in 1962 and published his debut collection Grauzone morgens in 1988. This was followed in 1991 by Schädelbasislektion and Falten und Fallen (1994). To date he has published some thirty books, most recently the poetry collection Koloß im Nebel (2012). The subject matter of Grünbein’s poems varies from reflections on dreams and time to classical materials and the city as a space for living in. Especially his big poems and cycles of recent years make him one of the most significant contemporary German poets.

In 1986 Grünbein moved from Dresden to East Berlin, and after Reunification he travelled widely throughout Europe, South-East Asia and the United States as a guest of among others the German Department of New York University, Villa Aurora in Los Angeles and Villa Massimo in Rome. Prizes he has received for his work include the 1995 Peter Huchel Prize and Georg Büchner Prize and, most recently, the 2012 Tomas Tranströmer Prize of the Swedish city of Västerås. Grünbein is a member of the Academy of Arts Berlin, the German Academy for Language and Poetry, the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg, the Free Academy of the Arts in Leipzig and the Saxon Academy of the Arts. He has been Professor for Poetics at the Dusseldorf Academy of Art since 2005 and a member of the Pour le Mérite in Berlin since 2008. He translates classical works from Latin and Greek.

Publications (a selection):

Porzellan. Poem vom Untergang meiner Stadt (Suhrkamp 2005)
Strophen für übermorgen. Gedichte (Suhrkamp 2007)
Liebesgedichte (Insel 2008)
Lob des Taifuns. Reisetagebücher in Haikus (Insel 2008)
Vom Stellenwert der Worte. Frankfurter Poetikvorlesung 2009 (Suhrkamp 2010)
Koloß im Nebel. Gedichte (Suhrkamp 2012)

Ishion Hutchinson, born in Port Antonio, Jamaica in 1983, studied English Literature in Jamaica before leaving his home country to continue his studies in the USA, where he has since lived.

His first book of poems, Far District, is a homage to rural Jamaica, its culture and its history, and won him the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Prize for Poetry and the Larry Levis Prize of the Academy of American Poets. His poems and essays have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including the Caribbean Review of Books, The Forward Book of Poetry, the L.A. Times Review Poetry International. He is a member of the Gorée Institute association of artists.

Hutchinson gained his doctorate from the University of Utah and teaches English Literature at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He is currently working on a book-length poem.

Publication:

Far District. Poems (Peepal Tree Press Limited, 2010)

Poet Luljeta Lleshanaku was born in Elbasan, Albania, in 1968 and grew up under house arrest during Albania’s Communist dictatorship because her family was part of the opposition. She was prevented from attending university or publishing her poems until the early 1990s. After the fall of Enver Hoxha, the studied Albanian Language and Literature at the University of Tirana and Creative Writing at the Warren Wilson College in the USA. Since 1993 Luljeta Lleshanaku has published seven books of poetry and is now regarded as one of Albanian poetry’s major voices. Prizes she has won for her poetry include the 2009 Kristal Vilenica Prize, and she has been a guest of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Lleshanaku has worked as a teacher, an editor and as a writer for film and television and is the Director of the Institute for the Reappraisal of Communist Genocide in Albania. She translated from the American and works for the Rlindja newspaper.

Publications:

Fresco: Selected Poetry (New Directions 2002)
Palca e verdhë (Gjon Buzuku 2000)
Antipastorale (Eurorilindja 1999)

Ilya Kaminsky (b. 1977 in Odessa in the former Soviet Union) has lived with his family in the USA since 1993. In Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press 2019) he makes silence legible – poetic moments combine to form a contemporary narrative of war and a city in whose ears snow falls. Ilya Kaminsky is co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Ecco 2010) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books 2012). His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writer's Award, the Metcalf Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation and an NEA fellowship. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry and the anthologies of the Pushart Prize. Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press 2004) was acclaimed Best Book of the Year in the magazine Foreword. Most recently, Kaminsky has been shortlisted for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He currently holds the Bourne Chair for Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and lives in Atlanta.

Publications:

Musica Humana, Chapiteau Press 2002

Dancing in Odessa, Tupelo Press 2004
Deaf Republic, Grayworld Press 2019

Awards (selection):

Whiting Writer's Award 2005

Metcalf Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2005

Scholarship of the Lannan Foundation 2008

Scholarship of the Guggenheim Foundation 2018

NEA Scholarship for Creative Writing 2019

Michael Krüger (b. 1943 in Wittgendorf, Saxony, Germany), has been one of the key figures in Germany's literary life for several decades as a poet, translator and editor.
Krüger is not just the managing director of the Munich press Carl Hanser Verlag, editor of the journal “Akzente” and the “Edition Akzente” series of titles and member of various academies, but is first and foremost a writer of poems, stories, novellas and novels.
His poems rely on the apparent simplicity of poetic images, the clarity of form. They are accessible structures in which it is nonetheless – happily! – possible lose one's way. One emerges from them changed.
After doing his “Abitur” at a Berlin “Gymnasium”, Krüger trained as a publisher's bookseller and book printer, while also sitting in on lectures in the Philosophy Department of the Free University Berlin. From 1962 to 1965 he lived in London, working as a bookseller. He began working as a literary critic in 1966.
In 1972, Krüger published his own poems for the first time, with his debut as a fiction writer twelve years later with the book “Was tun? Eine altmodische Geschichte” [What Should We Do? An Old-Fashioned Story]. This has been followed since then by numerous other collections of stories, novels, edited works and translations.
Among many other distinctions, Michael Krüger has bee awarded the Peter Huchel Prize, the Ernst Meister Prize and the large Literature Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.
Publications (a selection):
Reginapoly. Poems, Hanser, Munich and Vienna, 1976.
Diderots Katze. Poems, Hanser, Munich and Vienna, 1978.
Was tun? Eine altmodische Geschichte, Wagenbach, Berlin 1984.
Das Ende des Romans. A Novella, Residenz, Salzburg 1990.
Der Mann im Turm. Novel, Residenz, Salzburg 1991.
Wettervorhersage. Poems, Residenz , Salzburg 1998.
Brief nach Hause. Poems, Residenz, Salzburg 1993.
Nachts, unter Bäumen. Poems, Residenz, Salzburg 1996.
Die Cellospielerin. Novel, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2000.
Kurz vor dem Gewitter. Poems, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2003.
Unter freiem Himmel. Poems, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2007.
Michael Krüger at ZVAB

Macedonian poet, essayist and translator Nikola Madzirov was born in Strumica in 1973, and is one of the most significant younger eastern European poets who have gained a worldwide audience. His debut collection Zaklučeni vo gradot (Locked in the City) made him a literary star. Themes such as home and being without a home are central to his poetry. Being without a home is even contained in his name, since majir means ‘man without a home’. His poems have been translated into more than thirty languages and published in books and anthologies in Europe, the USA and Asia.

His collection Premesten kamen (Relocated Stone) won him the 2007 Hubert Burda Prize for East European Poets and the major Macedonian honour, the Brothers Miladinov Prize. Madzirov has been awarded several residencies around the world including the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, the Literarisches Tandem in Berlin, the International Writers’ House in Graz, Villa Waldberta in Munich and the LCB.

Publications:

Zaklučeni vo gradot (Magor 1999)
Premesten kamen (Magor 2007)

Publications in English translation:

Remnants of Another Age (BOA Editions, USA, 2011 and Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2013)

Iman Mersal was born in Mit ‘Adlan in Egypt in 1966. She gained her doctorate from the University of Cairo and for several years edited the feminist cultural and literary journal Bint al-Ard (Daughters of the Earth). In 1998 she emigrated to the USA and now lives in Canada. Her poems recall the traditions of magic realism, with ambiguity and uncanniness presented in clear images. Childhood recollections tip into the surreal and she inscribes her split cultural experience into the body. The story of women shines through all her texts in ways that are sometimes subtle but sometimes blatant. To date, Mersal has published four collections of verse, which have been translated into several languages. In 2005 the film Stranger in her Own Skin was made, dealing with the experience of migration as reflected in her poetry.

Imam Mersal teaches Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada.  She is currently living in Berlin. She currently lives in Berlin as a post-doctoral fellow in the EUME – Europe in the Middle East, the Middle East in Europe – research programme at the Forum for Transregional Studies.

Publications (a selection):

Ittisafat (Characterisations) (Dar al-Ghad 1990)
Mamarr mu'tim yasluh lita'allum al-raqs (A dark gait in enough for learning to dance) (Dar Sharqiyat 1995)
Al-Mashy Atwal Waqt Mumkin (Walking – as long as possible) (Dar Sharqiyat 1997)
Jughrafiya Badila (Alternative Geography) (Dar Sharqiyat 2006)
Hatta atakhalla `an fikrat al-buyut (Until I give up the idea of home) (Dar Sharqiyat / Dar al-Tanwir 2013)

Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk in Belarus in 1981. She grew up in the Soviet Union and did not learn Belarusian until her teens, since it was not an official language until 1990 and had been displaced by Russian. She subsequently made the language into the instrument for her poetry, which has since gained worldwide attention. She studied English in Minsk and Creative Writing in Washington, D.C. Since 2005 she has lived in the USA where she teaches at Cornell University.

Valzhyna Mort has so far published four collections of poetry. Her highly-praised Factory of Tears, published in 2008, follows the stations of her life from a childhood in a country full of fear to he emigration to the USA. Collected Body, published in 2011, is her first collection written in English and continues her family history marked by hunger and loss. She has received many prizes for her poetry including the 2004 Kristal Vilenica Prize and the 2008 Hubert Burda Prize for Young Eastern European Poetry. She has been a guest of the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, the Berlin Artists’ Programme of the DAAD and the Lannan Literary Foundation. She is the current holder of the Siegfried Unseld Professorship in Berlin.

Publications:

я тоненькая як твае вейкі (I am as thin as your eyelashes) (Тэксты, Мн. 2005)
Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press 2008)
Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press 2011)

Tomaž Šalamun was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1941, and is regarded as one of Slovenia’s greatest contemporary poets and one of the leading figures of the East European poetic avantgarde. His poetry is marked by a unique surrealistic style. Since the 1960s he has published 41 volumes of verse, which have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Šalamun grew up in Koper in the former Yugoslavia. Under Tito’s rule he was arrested in 1964 for publishing a poem that was taken to be critical of the regime, but was able to leave prison after five days thanks to a wave of international protest. Šalamun has for decades been a wanderer between worlds, spending several years in the USA where among other things he was a guest of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University. He taught in American universities and was cultural attaché at the Slovenian Embassy in New York. The many prizes he has won for his work include the Pushcart Prize, the Slovenian Prešeren Prize and, jointly with his German translator the Fabjan Hafner, the Prize of the City of Münster for International Poetry. He is a member of the Slovenian Academy for Arts and Sciences and lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 

Publications in English translation

The Selected Poems of Tomaž Šalamun (Ecco Press, 1998)
The Shepherd, the Hunter (Pedernal, 1992)
The Four Questions of Melancholy (White Pine, 1997)
Feast (Harcourt, 2000)
Poker (Ugly Duckling Presse)
Row! (Arc Publications)
The Book for My Brother (Harcourt)
Woods and Chalices (Harcourt)
There's the Hand and There's the Arid Chair (Counterpath, 2009)

Adam Zagajewski was born in Lvóv in the Ukraine in 1945 and is the author of many books of verse and essays as well as several novels. His debut as a poet came in 1972 with the volume Komunikat.

Zagajewski comes from a Polish family that had lived in Lviv for hundreds of years but were expelled to Gliwice in Poland when the city came under Soviet control. He was a vocal critic of the Polish Communist Party from the mid-1970s, resulting in his books being banned from publication until 1989. Zagajewski left Poland in 1981 and went into exile in Paris via West Berlin and the USA. He returned to Kraków in 2002. He now lives in Kraków and Chicago, where he has been teaching at the university since 2007.

Adam Zagajewski is a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His work has garnered many prizes including the Prix de la Liberté, the Nikolaus Lenau Prize for European Poetry, the Horst Bienek Prize and the Samuel Bogomil Linde Prize as well as the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. German translations of Zagajewski’s poems and essays have frequently appeared in the journal published by the Academy of Arts, Sinn und Form and English translations have appeared widely.

Publications in English translation:

Tremor (1985)
Canvas (1991)
Mysticism for Beginners (1997)
Without End: New and Selected Poems (2002)
Eternal Enemies: Poems (2008)
Unseen Hand: Poems (2011)