HAUS FÜR POESIE

To date, Eva H.D. has published three poetry collections: Rotten Perfect Mouth (2015), Shiner (2016), and The Natural Hustle (2023). A rich selection of her work has now appeared in German with Hanser Verlag under the title Wenn alle deine Freunde vom Felsen springen (If All Your Friends Jump Off a Cliff), translated by Anne-Kristin Mittag and Steffen Popp. Eva H.D. became known to a wider audience, not necessarily familiar with poetry, when her poem “Bonedog” was recited in Charlie Kaufman’s film I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020). She also wrote the screenplay for his short film Jackals & Fireflies, released three years later.

In her poetry, Eva H.D. writes about fireworks and fire ants, about rap and quarrels. Her hard-boiled protagonists prefer love in shades of broken red, not "that gauzy, crinoline love, a peachy blur" They feel distance in their muscles, always on the proverbial brink, until all they see of the falcon is the hovering in the rearview mirror, „a speck in the anycoloured sky“. These are prayers spun from manic joy, chronicling the singing on of light, the bony statistics of gravestone inscriptions, the square knot of happiness „twined twin with despair“, and the vast reserves of lost confidence. At the same time, they contain practical advice for everyday life—for instance, readers learn how to ease a hangover with Brahms.

Poet Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw, a place whose name—if it didn’t already exist—could easily have come from one of her poems. She has published six collections in total, the most recent, Wellwater, appearing this year. Her third book, Pigeon, is legendary; it won the prestigious Griffin Prize in 2010. In its citation, the jury—of which Anne Carson was a member—noted that Solie can strike sparks of wisdom from even the most ordinary events. Her poems chart departures to nowhere and the cheap lodgings that line the way. They tell of ordinary people (“the only animal who kills from a distance”) and their dark sides, of dates in derelict motel lobbies, and the rekindling of long-buried high school feuds at reunions. Her heroines carry water in paper cups and a faint trace of mild bewilderment in their hearts. For them, desire is “all heat and bad timing.” „If virtue is love“ she writes, „ordered and controlled, its wild enemy has made a home in me. And if desire injures the spirit, I am afflicted.“

For this evening, Karen Solie’s poems from Wellwater will be presented in specially commissioned German translations.

The event will be interpreted between English and German.
With the kind support of ECHOO Conference Interpreting.

Reading & discussion: Eva H.D., Karen Solie
Moderation: Steffen Popp