Article
Welcome to German Poetry - April 2005
January 18, 2006
The poetry scene in Germany, and Berlin in particular, is up and coming at the moment. Once the mid-1990s hype about the “literature of the new generation” had faded a bit, the critics realized that some of the most qualified texts and the most promising new voices were coming from the usually neglected field of poetry. So now it’s time to use new media, to put poetry right on the screen of people who maybe would not go to a bookstore to look for a book of poetry themselves.
Because, after all, if there is something like a global language of poetry, it is based on regional differences and has to be presented in all its variety. In addition, no tradition of poetry can or seeks to dispose of its past. So poetry is a precise instrument for recognizing the inner relations and movements within particular languages, countries, and societies. At the same time, showing these within its structure, poetry is an international ‘pioneer language’, as Gerhard Falkner put it.
Although there are contemporary poems that seem to require a sort of theoretical scaffolding, there is no conclusive theory to replace what every poem has to prove for itself: that it is a successful expression of a unique experience, a striking new way of looking at the world and at language.
In addition to contemporary poetry, you can also find addresses and links to institutions, publishers, and magazines that are important in the field of German poetry. And until there is a PIW editor responsible for poetry from Austria and Switzerland, we will also include information relevant to these countries.
So have fun letting these poems change your view of the world! Let them invite you into their language games. Find out what our contemporary poetry is about, how it reflects Germany today, and how it reflects you, the reader!
After having presented some of the major poets born in the 1950s and 1960s in both East and West Germany, such as Uwe Kolbe, Kerstin Hensel, Gerhard Falkner, Brigitte Oleschinski and Durs Grünbein, we have given you a glimpse of young contemporary German poetry. Following the last two issues, dedicated to Nico Bleutge and Monika Rinck, you now have the chance to read poems by Marcel Beyer, born 1965, one of the most talked-about – and actually read – young German authors.
Marcel Beyer is a writer who knows how to combine theoretical awareness and allusion with precise (self-) observation. The word ‘snow’, for example, in Beyer can serve as a sign for the unfathomable polyvalence of every sign and every gesture – or perhaps just mean ‘it snowed’. Or maybe it didn’t.The poetry scene in Germany, and Berlin in particular, is up and coming at the moment. Once the mid-1990s hype about the “literature of the new generation” had faded a bit, the critics realized that some of the most qualified texts and the most promising new voices were coming from the usually neglected field of poetry. So now it’s time to use new media, to put poetry right on the screen of people who maybe would not go to a bookstore to look for a book of poetry themselves.
Because, after all, if there is something like a global language of poetry, it is based on regional differences and has to be presented in all its variety. In addition, no tradition of poetry can or seeks to dispose of its past. So poetry is a precise instrument for recognizing the inner relations and movements within particular languages, countries, and societies. At the same time, showing these within its structure, poetry is an international ‘pioneer language’, as Gerhard Falkner put it.
Although there are contemporary poems that seem to require a sort of theoretical scaffolding, there is no conclusive theory to replace what every poem has to prove for itself: that it is a successful expression of a unique experience, a striking new way of looking at the world and at language.
In addition to contemporary poetry, you can also find addresses and links to institutions, publishers, and magazines that are important in the field of German poetry. And until there is a PIW editor responsible for poetry from Austria and Switzerland, we will also include information relevant to these countries.
So have fun letting these poems change your view of the world! Let them invite you into their language games. Find out what our contemporary poetry is about, how it reflects Germany today, and how it reflects you, the reader!
© Heiko Strunk and Alexander Gumz
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