HAUS FÜR POESIE

Two poets from Ritter Verlag are guests at Haus für Poesie this evening: Hannah K Bründl (born 1996 in Steyr) with schilfern (2025) and Franziska Füchsl (born 1991 in Putzleinsdorf) with Die Straßen sind sichtbar (2023).

Hannah K Bründl’s collection schilfern opens with a statistic from the Autonomous Women’s Shelters of Austria: almost one in three women aged 15 and older in Austria is affected by physical and/or sexualized violence. But how can we speak of this—and of love—when our very language itself is “infiziert” and permeated by structures of violence: “das kommando ist dem leib eingeschrieben / nimm ein wort wie sehnsucht in den mund”? Layer by layer, word by word, these poems peel away encrusted layers of language to uncover a self-determined voice in which a nonviolent way of speaking about love becomes possible, “radikal, vollumfänglich, in sicherheit,” a language that sustains without “die nebensächliche grausamkeit der vertrauten benennungen.”

“Solange keine Schraube durchdreht, ist da Spiel,” it says at one point in Franziska Füchsl’s Die Straßen sind sichtbar, and perhaps that could serve as its motto. Here, paved-over streets and seemingly seamless (linguistic) structures are tested for their flexibility: “Mein Draußen ist das Spiel, das ich in der Aussparung im Pflaster meines jeden Tages habe.” The speaker exposes the trees that “in eingedrilltem Abstand appellartig” are glued into place by municipal workers with hot glue, as mere images of trees—trees like children’s drawings. Against this, she posits another kind of wildness, the sovereignty of play: “Ich habe mich verliebt in die Möglichkeit, die Weise, in der ich lebe, vollends zu ändern.”

In reading & conversation Hannah K Bründl, Franziska Füchsl
Moderation Caca Savic