the crackling high
Reading & Conversation with Elke Heinemann, Seda Mimaroğlu, Christiane Quandt & Erec Schumacher

Poets' Corner
Reading
Talk
Poesiefestival Berlin 2026
Brotfabrik
← / →

Elke Heinemann © Marta Buso

Seda Mimaroğlu © privat

Christiane Quandt © Pierre Horn

Erec Schumacher © Magdalena Montasser

The poems of this evening follow shifting signals. Yet what unites them is their tracing of sounds: sounds that they amplify and rearrange, swelling into images that are at times melancholic, laconic, and occasionally sharply humorous. They absorb interference, rustle and hum, sometimes appearing in cool minimal beats, at other times unfolding in the pauses between the beats. In this way, hybrid forms emerge at the intersection of sound, text, and image. Readings will be drawn from recently published volumes by etcetera press Berlin.

Elke Heinemann, born in 1961 in Essen, is a poet and lives in Berlin and Venice. Her poetry collection gewölk gestein gewässer (etcetera press berlin 2025) moves between curiosity and precision, engaging with different states and material conditions of inorganic and organic matter. The volume brings together poems in German and Italian (translated by Cristina Vezzaro) and is accompanied by photographs by Elke Bludau and graphics by Erec Schumacher.

Intricate and painfully open – this is how the poet Maria Stepanova describes the volume Love Songs (Blue Figure Press 2021) by Seda Mimaroğlu, which are published in German translation by Andreas Reihse in spring 2026, with whom she regularly performs as part of the duo İkili in sound performances. Mimaroğlu is a poet and artist from Istanbul and lives in Berlin. Her language dissects everyday situations, searches for points of contact on days at the beach, and looks at what remains: shirt, scarf, books, a letter, a question.

Christiane Quandt, author and translator from Spanish, continues in 90 spiegelneurosen (2025) her autobiographical and autofictional entries that originated on social media. The lyrical I is in constant metamorphosis: it transforms into silverfish, woodlice, or a jukebox, rolls down flowerbeds, reads ingredient lists, and extends the decay period by five years. Quandt combines sharp humour with experiences of vulnerability, neurodiversity, and chronic illness.

Erec Schumacher lives and works in Berlin as a freelance writer, visual artist, publisher, and founder of etcetera press berlin, as well as an organiser and activist. He also curated the festival “Multiverse – zeitgenössische Positionen der Visuellen Poesie” in 2024 and 2025. His recent publications include neufundland (Moloko Print, 2024) as well as chapbooks of visual poetry, cut-ups, and décollages, most recently Bullshit-Tage (ecetera press berlin 2025). In neufundland, the poems balance on the edge of the abyss, challenge the apocalypse to cooperate, and consistently testify to a resistant solidarity.

Moderation Saskia Warzecha

With texts in German and English. The event takes place in German.

Funded by Bezirksamt Pankow