unfinished business

die strassen auf links / und kein schneehuhn / jetzt als ob der winter / hängt und wein und gläser / pinselspitzenwelt / der fernsehmaler stellt/ sein hüttchen in die hügel / ...

away for the weekend

guys, i'll be in germany over the weekend. i'll try and keep on posting stuff, but i can't promise... otherwise, see ya next week.

someone doesn't want people to read this

my friend K, who is spending a couple of months in nanjing at the moment, let me know that my blog has been censored in china. i'm not sure whether that applies for the other blogspot blogs, too, but it struck me as being absurd and ridiculous. it is also a great reminder of the fact that freedom of speech and freedom of opinion are values that need to be fought for and defended perpetually. i therefore invite you to sign amnesty international's petition for freedom of expression on the internet. read more about their campaign here or have a look at the Open Network Initiative's global internet filtering map here to see who keeps what from whom.

i have added the campaign's badge to the lower right part of the blog, so that you can see what kind of information has been withheld from people all around the globe. if you click on it, you will be directed to irrepressible.info, where they will tell you from what homepage they took the excerpt and in which country it has been censored.

2nd try, DIE ZEIT article on switzerland

http://www.zeit.de/online/2007/43/schweiz-wahlen

and oh! and look!

the austrian ballhaus came up with a complete program (plus pictures) for 8 november 2007 in klagenfurt... i'll be reading with johannes weinberger, and marcus smaller of 3 feet smaller will be playing music. neat, i'm really looking forward to this!

i was going to post something this morning, but then i didn't, and now i forgot.

i have to read a lot for uni at the moment, mainly on the differences of so-called 'old' and 'new' civil wars, and how their economies work. all that's pretty interesting, but it keeps me from reading for pleasure. thinking back now, what i liked best about working in munich were the ways to and from work, when i had time to read whatever i fancied on the tube. here, my tube rides are too short for that, and i've also started to walk at least a third of each way to and back from uni, just to evade the masses of gray-suited people that fold themselves into the carriages every day.

in the meantime, lauter niemand has put up the biographies and pictures of the authors reading with me in berlin in november. nice!

i have reworked a poem

these may appear to be only minor changes, but jesusnacht (day 157, 27 august 2007) now goes like this:

und ich stricke zwei sterne/ die du dir annähen kannst/ stick dir an die hand kleine/ perlen back dir dieses und/ jenes tamtam in der ferne ich/ fädel dir singsang ins ohr hier/ ein pilgerfährtchen zum ort wo/ du wohnst vors hoftor/ ein hallo nur ein schimmer/ zum gruss nur ein halber halo.

DIE ZEIT finds switzerland is getting normal. (it's quite an interesting read.)

john mayer on creation by way of necessity

to read his full post, just click on the excerpt below.

It's been a long time since the days of my playing small acoustic club dates, and though I'm more than happy (and extremely lucky) to be where I am these days, one thing I've missed is the creative spirit of working without a net. Some of my best songs were written because I had a show nearing and needed more original songs to take the place of covers. It was creation by way of necessity. [...]

I'm going to return to that firefight, taking small late night gigs [...], writing songs and playing them when they're still fresh. The date of the gig is my self-imposed finish line and I will play a new song with each set I perform. [...]

I'm also ready to accept the fact that some people will try and read into the lyrics and make gossip out of them, but I can't worry about that. Trying to avoid that would be the worst thing for my songwriting. I won't let the success I've had make me comfortable, or the media exposure make me fearful of expressing myself. [...]

it's interesting how certain aspects of creative work apply to practically every medium of expression. i'm in need of more current original work at the moment, as well, and even though i don't have gossip magazines speculating on my relationship status, i can very well relate.

also, i've decided to start from scratch in terms of touch typing. i've been wanting to do that for a long time and have been collecting information on classes and stuff around my london neighborhood. typing controlled like this takes ages, but i'll just take it as a meditation or something. n i r v a n a . n i r v a n a. n i r v a n a.

random thoughts

i would be hollering bricks whereas you,
you would sound like that church
in the aisle of which i would pause
and breathe and say: god, i really
like your shirt, you know, let's wrap
that cuteness, baby, let's reciprocate.

reading in berlin

it will be my privilege to read with the following authors at the lauter niemand magazine launch in berlin on 18 november 2007:

ann cotten (i love her poetry, what a pleasure!!!), katarina bendixen, joseph danaghie, katrin heinau and johann reißer.

what else? there's a new cooperation of young german literary magazines. you'll find their project at junge-magazine.de. from what i saw, that page looks pretty good... but what else would you expect, having lauter niemand, edit, bella triste, sprachgebunden and so forth under one roof?

a poem on static warfare or something

this is, like, the fifth version of this poem. i guess my field of study shows through here.

standlauf

vom ein mann zwei mann
turm her: betrachtung
der nebelkörper

schweben marder
feine silberfäden
vors beobachtungsgerät

rasch: kampfwertbestimmung
die jüngste entfernung
bemessen in herzschlägen

[stets]

näher

[stets]

näher als nirgends.

ballhaus all the way

there are two confirmed readings coming up, both of which involve not only myself, obviously, but other authors as well:

08.11.2007 - klagenfurt (austria) - ballhaus.at

18.11.2007 - berlin (germany) - ballhaus ost

as you might have noticed, both locations are called 'ballhaus'. this is a total coincidence.

the latter is organized by my friends from lauter niemand, who will celebrate the launch of their this year's edition.

as yet, neither have officially confirmed their programs, so i will get back to you guys with more detailed information once it's all formalized.

i started writing another short story, too, which is coming along alright. as yet, i haven't quite found the balance between reading for uni, writing and leisure, and am still trying to juggle all this and focus my attention on either one of them at a time.

(picture taken from pictures of walls.)

gardens & castles

i found marcus roloff's GÄRTEN & SCHLÖSSER [GARDENS & CASTLES] on hendrik jackson's lyrikkritik page yesterday night, shortly after i complained about not having found anything i liked to translate recently. so i stayed up late and translated it. i have to admit i wasn't sure about the comma placement, so i just left them where he put them in the german version of the poem.


GARDENS & CASTLES

that it's autumn & light out of heaven by
heaven, when years created creator's
breath is essential is out of the question, falls
when he off & on oozes on screens of the gardens
for instance & castles of potsdam, down-
wards, to end titles, the last roll, and home
going walks through glass walls with
sun pillars & blue prints, on grounds of
one's pockets, filled with streets & spaces, jacobi's
fathergod in one's bags, only soaked
cookies, a life long aide
memoire for hereafter.

it seems my this year's luck with competitions is used up. einseitig has sent me an email today, saying that my text tanz aus narkose didn't make it into the final six (out of a hundred); the upside to this is that i won't have to fly into basel the weekend before our first essays for uni are due in december. also, my poem will still be published in a swiss online magazine called Nahaufnahmen [closeup views]. they couldn't tell me exactly when it would be up, but 'sometime soon'. i'm completely unaware of how many more submissions they've chosen for publication, so let's just wait and see.

my daily a4 page, by the way, has in the meantime become a daily half-a-page. i find that still better than writing nothing at all, though.

as yet, i'm still pretty busy organizing my schedule, making myself comfortable on the tube, trying out shortcuts and stuff. i haven't done any translation work in ages, which i regret, but have only today ordered sylvia plath's collection of short stories called Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams - i'm thinking about translating one of these, this time the other way around, from english to german, just for the fun of it.

i'm on my seventh a4 page, 12 pt, with that longer story. i'm looking at writing as many as possible, ideally 50+. it's gonna be tough re-reading and editing that, though, once i've managed to amass as much text... if at all. but i still want to try, the novel project has not died just yet.

oh, by the way, the location i will be reading at on 8 november is the ballhaus in klagenfurt. come check it out, if you can, the official program of the night is to be released soon.

you're probably wondering why i'm so quiet. well, i've been writing a little, that longer piece i was talking about, just seeing how it goes. there's a concept to it, only a very vague one, so i'm not really confident talking about it here. i haven't been writing any more poetry, either, so there's nothing new to put here, really. sorry for that.

looks like i'll be going to austria again beginning of november. i'll let you know once it's official. besides that, london is pretty great. i enjoy being here, even though it means watching rugby at times. it's actually funny, you know. so yeah, anyways, there's no interesting competitions coming up i would like to partake in, which is good in a way, cause it means that when i'm writing, i'm concentrating on that longer piece.

(picture taken from pictures of walls.)

more drowsy music - NICE!

p.s. go to sleep, B!

here are a couple of pictures of saturday night. i'm pretty sure i've been quoted wrongly, though: i'd never say die einzige Beschäftigung, wo... but whatever.

on my trip back to london i read youth by j. m. coetzee. i liked it, and not only for it's london setting, even though he goes on quite a bit about numerous historic authors i've never heard of before.

the viennese will love me for this

und dieses wien, das viel hellgrauer als das - mein - london ist, das ist kein umgängliches. man trifft hier, von ein, zwei, drei ausnahmen abgesehen, nur wortkarge leute, die sich die lippen beissen. aber t und das glas, davon weiss ich noch, wie das licht durch das fenster und dann durch das bier schien und gelbe quadrate und all die rauten auf jenem kantinentisch. sonst alles steinig hier, viele rillen und endlose fensterzeilen, das ist das wien, das mir bleiben wird, bis ich mal wiederkomme. das und die skateboardfahrer, die sprünge probieren und halbhohe hopser filmen, vielleicht.

[and this vienna, which is way more grey than - my - london, that is unsociable. one meets here, apart from a couple exceptions maybe, just silent people, who bite their lips. but t and his glass, that i'll remember, the light through the window that shone through his beer and threw yellow rhombuses on that tabletop. otherwise everything's stoney here, gouges and endless window lines, this is the vienna that i will remember until i return. that and the practicing skateboard people, who filmed half-high hops, perhaps.]

back from a wicked weekend in austria, i've been trying to get my head around this:

and this: ,

both available here or here, for example.
(ISBN 978-3-902373-28-1)

there are online versions of the text with the standard (kultur -> literatur) and fm4 (see here).

what a great weekend!