HAUS FÜR POESIE

Each year, ten poetry experts select ten German-language poetry collections and ten collections translated into German as part of the annual Lyrik-Empfehlungen (Poetry Recommendations). On this evening, three of the selected volumes will be presented:

Abdalrahman Alqalaq (born 1997 in Alyarmouk, a refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus) is a Palestinian poet and performer. Last year, he published his collection Übergangsritus (Rite of Passage, Wallstein Verlag), translated from Arabic by Günther Orth, Leila Chammaa, and Sandra Hetzl. Selected by poet Sam Zamrik for the recommendations list, this volume contains poetry and prose that search for belonging between homeland and exile. It gives voice to the unlived life left behind in flight, and the present life in exile marked by loneliness and grief—by what the poet once calls the “exile syndrome”: Where one is born, one owns their shadow / But the shadows of us migrants are swallowed / we stagger across the earth / until we kill an old self and a new one rises.

Karin Fellner (born 1970 in Munich) presents her new poetry collection Polle und Fu (parasitenpresse, 2024), selected by Christian Metz. At first glance, the book seems almost lighthearted: the duo Polle and Fu is marked by constant transformation, by “metabolizing names that sometimes cling together this way, sometimes that way—bumping, rejoicing.” The collection celebrates a “festival of the fluid” and the “gentle acuity of misfiring.” With skillfully restructured sounds, dense verse, and sharp linguistic play, these poems challenge habitual patterns of thought and expose routine ways of speaking that prove inadequate for engaging with a (potentially threatening) present: Don't wait any longer— / better, present the present!

Eva Maria Leuenberger (born 1991 in Bern) will be present with her third collection, die spinne (the spider, Literaturverlag Droschl, 2024), selected by Kerstin Preiwuß. This carefully composed long poem depicts a disquieting scene: a vaguely defined you lies in a room on this mattress, / under a white sheet, / on its back, / wingless, while a spider sits on the ceiling. In pared-down, precise language and allegory—possibly referencing the Swiss classic The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf—Leuenberger writes of the existential doom of environmental destruction, to which humanity is both guilty and helplessly exposed.

Kindly supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.
The Poetry Recommendations are a joint initiative of the German Academy for Language and Literature, Lyrik Kabinett Foundation, Haus für Poesie, the German Library Association, and the German Literature Fund.

Reading and Conversation:
Abdalrahman Alqalaq | Karin Fellner | Eva Maria Leuenberger
Moderation: Beate Tröger