ONTO TORONTO – Toronto's first Berlin-Style Poetry Collective

Because I’m missing Berlin’s poetry scene (there just doesn’t seem to be anything like it in Toronto… Am I looking in the wrong places?), I started Onto Toronto the other day. Onto Toronto is Toronto’s first Berlin-inspired poetry collective. It offers regular writing groups, readings, workshops, and a free blog magazine. You may submit your on work for publication and/or for being considered to join the writing group. You can find out more about the rules of submission here.

better late than never

This fall, my bilingual German/English poetry collection will be published by SPRUNGTURM Verlag in Cologne. It will contain recent unpublished poetry as well as fully revised, updated and freshly translated older work. I'm working on the manuscript right now and am obviously very excited. The title is still to be decided upon. I'll keep you posted.

happy 4th birthday, WOAW

WOAW turns four today. that makes me happy, even though i haven't been spending much time here lately. a lot of my attention has been devoted to girls can blog, probably because it's less of a niche product and more of an allround good cause.

obviously, the downside of occupying myself mostly with gcb is that the better part of my creative energy is dedicated to "digital social work" as opposed to poetry. it's a typical dilemma known to writers: i love doing x [i.e. painting], but if i do too much of it, there'll be no juices left for writing. most of us choose less x and more writing.

with gcb, most of the work to be done, though, is writing: posts, emails, comments. proper blogging also involves a fair bit of reading. i love it. yet while i have received great support and appreciation of what i have accomplished with gcb, i also get frequent questions regarding the lack of new material of both prose and poetry. i have been asked why my novella hasn't been published in spite of good reviews, nor a poetry collection with any of the usual publishers, and why i haven't devoted more time and effort to get either.

first easy answer: because i can't have my finger in every pie. i like where i'm at right now with gcb. second, more difficult answer: because i would rather keep my poetry to myself than be on the knocker and beg people to print it!

i have undertaken one sole attempt when a friend of mine alerted me to the fact that her publisher was looking for female poets especially. i emailed the person in charge and asked whether that was true. needless to say, i never received an answer and have thus decided that that was that.

with WOAW around for four years now, i am fairly positive that plenty of people in positions to publish a poet's work are aware of what i do. by now, many of them know my writing. event organizers and editors alike. if they decide to ignore me, so be it. i am over mailing in poems to magazines that publish only work of people their editors have slept with (and trust me, turnover is high!). but i do accept that these are the rules of the game; maybe not so much the sex, but the ass-kissing for sure. i am sorry to say that i have lost interest in what used to be the soul of this blog: my curiosity about up and coming german poets, especially those of berlin. in my opinion, most current poetry has become interchangeable and obsolete, save a few glorious exceptions, so i have stopped working for that crowd's acceptance. i have stopped reading their work. i have stopped going to readings.

you might think i'm jealous. well, i have never been the jealous type. naturally, i, too, would like to see my novella in print or have my own poetry collection, which poet wouldn't? but not at the price of dignity and boredom. 

throughout this recent development, WOAW has remained to be my loyal, patient companion. as have my readers. like last year, the year before, and the year before that, i'd like to thank each and every single one of you for stopping by or following my RSS feed.*

to your loyalty and our next years together!
thanks. annina

* if you wonder what an RSS feed might be, try this explanation.

BOOKS bags: kurt, astrid & max

kurt

max

astrid

das sind die neuen WOAW B♥♥KS-bags max, kurt & astrid. ihr design und ihre preise sind angelehnt an die Euch vielleicht schon bekannten GCB BLOGS bags. der bestellvorgang ist einfach: email mit modellwunsch und adresse an wordsonawatch[at]gmail[dot]com. die beutel kosten 10,50€ pro stück, dazu kommen porto und versand (innerhalb deutschlands 2,25€, EU 3,45€). wer in berlin wohnt oder auf die re:publica 2011 kommt, kann sich die taschen auch persönlich übergeben lassen und ein paar taler sparen. und wer seine lieblingsfarbkombination nicht entdeckt, kann mir sonderwünsche gerne zukommen lassen - vielleicht designt susanne ja ein weiteres modell?*

benannt sind die taschen übrigens nach astrid lindgren, kurt vonnegut und max frisch, die allesamt bücher geschrieben haben, die ich sehr schätze.

* so bereits geschehen bei magda, die wir der bloggerin magda albrecht zu verdanken haben.

last week & i

ich habe es auf facebook schon gesagt: die klappentexterin hat andosina rezensiert und ich freue mich so! ihr text trägt den titel "wie laut stille sein kann".

ausserdem ist die neue skolastin da, mit einem alten text von mir drin: bärenklau aus dem jahre 2007 - das heft auf seite 71 aufschlagen fühlt sich an wie eine papyrusrolle aus einer anderen zeit aufkrempeln. sie haben meinen namen falsch geschrieben, vielleicht hilft das ja, um meine identität zu vertuschen? naja, downloaden und reinlesen kost ja nix. martin fritz, mit dem ich letztes jahr im rahmenprogramm des bachmannpreises lesen durfte, und mieze medusa kommen zum glück auch drin vor. also im heft, nicht in der geschichte.

i'll be reading @ parlandopark

parlandopark is a new series of events. this is their official newsletter or something. please note that i'll be reading with berlin's poetry kings and queens monika rinck, steffen popp, hendrik jackson, nora bossong, johannes hupp und christian filips. this is a FREE EVENT, there is NO COVER CHARGE.

Parlandopark - Texte Filme Fluchtpunkte

Parlando meint nicht das Geschwätz, das uns täglich begleitet, vielmehr ein dem Sprechgesang ähnliches, schnelles Singen unter genauer Beachtung des Rhythmus. Parlandopark ist unser Tarnname für Revue & Revolte, einen Ort für lyrische Eskapaden und kritische Anwürfe, ein Büro für Kritik, death by Power point, Pudel auf Brühschlitten. Gesucht werden: Begriffe, Texte, Bilder – Fluchtpunkte inmitten der Verödung des Prenzlauer Bergs, der grassierenden Vermarktungen, Verquarkungen und Zurichtungen.

Am 12. Dezember 2010 20:00 Uhr findet die Pilot-Party zu einer zukünftigen Lese- und Debattenreihe statt, die ab dem neuen Jahr einen Ort haben wird:

Der Parlandopark im Soupanova.

Es lesen: Monika Rinck, Steffen Popp, Hendrik Jackson, Annina Luzie Schmid, Nora Bossong, Johannes Hupp und Christian Filips.

Soupanova, Stargarder Straße 24, ab 20 Uhr, Eintritt frei!

 Ab 2011 werden dort JEDEN SONNTAG Adrijana Bohocki, Steffen Popp, Simone Kornappel und Hendrik Jackson offene Abende moderieren

9.1. Pudel auf Brühschlitten Der Lyriker Steffen Popp stellt alte Bücher und schlechte sowie geniale Gedichte vor, danach offene Runde. Steffen Popp und Hendrik Jackson moderieren.

16.1.  Death by Powerpoint Simone Kornappel (Lyrikerin, randnummer-Herausgeberin) stellt Texte und Kunst vor. Voraussichtlicher Gast: Norbert Lange, danach: offene Runde

23.1. Revue & Revolte Adrijana Bohocki (ehem. lauter niemand) lädt zur offenen Runde: Jeder ist eingeladen eigene Texte (evt. mit Kopien), Kurzfilme, Bilder und Fotografien (auf CD) vorzustellen und vom Publikum diskutieren zu lassen. Gern mit Anmeldung per Nachricht an parlandopark@web.de oder über facebook.

30.1. Büro für Kritik Hendrik Jackson (Lyriker, Herausgeber von lyrikkritik.de) quält mit der Kritik "Sodom und Ghomorra" oder lobt in den Himmel mit Kritik "Honigzunge"!

Special guest voraussichtlich: der Pasolini-Übersetzer Christian Filips.

A N D O S I N A

remember Andosina, that novella i wrote back in 2008? well, it's finally available in german.

wer mag, kann hier für 2 € eine PDF-datei erwerben.

zum inhalt: andorra, london, geissen, lurche, liebe, frauen, männer.

oder in oliver bottinis worten: "Wenn das Leben im vierzehnten Stock nur ein wenig einfacher wäre. Aber da sind die Sehnsucht, die Einsamkeit, und der Traum von einem zweiten Leben in Andorra."

new to WOAW: Flattr !

this morning while sitting at the doctor's, i received my Flattr invite. i still mustn't type with my right hand, so please just watch the video above to find out what Flattr is all about. i think it's a fantastic service and hope many of you will appreciate the idea, sign up and share the love!

WOAW @ Mädchenmannschaft

How could I miss the posting of my own WWW Girls interview over at the Mädchenmannschaft on 15 April 2010? Oh well. Thank you for having me, Helga!

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY, WOAW!

WORDS ON A WATCH turns three today, and for me that means party introspection: how has the internet changed the way we writers work? as this is quite a complicated question, i'm glad sibylle berg has already answered it generally here, so i'll be ok to just speak for myself:

to me, the internet is

...a space to express myself in a myriad of ways, to get active and launch projects like the #50bookschallenge or girls can blog
...my very own trade fair - networking through facebook and twitter has never been easier than today. i've just started sorting the people i follow into lists, perhaps they're of use to you, too? 
...my mobile notebook-anthology-brain-hard drive-event calendar-desk-gallery. to me, the web is a very visual place that i like to hang out in
...a motivator to get things done. as is my readership. i think that if your number hadn't gone up steadily over time, i would have given up long ago
...an ideal place for feedback. both incoming (examples here, here, and there) and outgoing (like here by myself and here by guest commentator oliver bottini). i love feedback and guest articles, so please keep them coming!
...an ideal place for announcements, too, like here and here.*

basically, WOAW is still a personal poetry blog, thick with opinion. if you're here for my poems only and never know where to look for them, click here and save that link. the newest poem will always come first. watch out, though, not all of them are ready for press just yet; from time to time i put up stuff just because i was so glad i had written anything at all. my writing periods are usually intense, as is my current writer's block. i don't have control over either.

i was going to go into last year's WOAW birthday speech a little more, but when i just read it, it sounded awfully negative. i think i was in a pretty bad place then and am very glad that i could move on from there in the second half of 2009. i went on said literary journey to zagreb, spoke to an agent (only to find out my novella was too short for publication still), and got published in important media like lyrikmail. i wonder what 2010 has up its sleeve...

thanks in any case for sticking around!
annina

*it seems like i forgot to annouce that i got published in the current edition of [sic] magazine? oops!

the 50 books challenge becomes official & WOAW is on twitter now

as of today, the 50 books challenge has its own 50 books challenge fan page on facebook. this is open to everybody and i greatly encourage all of you to join!

also, i finally created a twitter account for WOAW. this will be linked to the above mentioned fan page - i even created a #50bookschallenge hash tag. feel free to add WOAW on twitter any time, i'll be delighted and more than happy to add you, too.

annina luzie schmid in lyrikmail !

after many years of receiving selected poetry in my inbox everyday, i was delighted to find one of my own poems called drei arten betäubung featured in today's lyrikmail. quite honestly, this made my day.

i can only recommend you sign up for gregor koall's excellent free service and donate some money to the SOS Kinderdörfer in his name. lyrikmail is also on twitter. (as am i.)

alright, that was it, i gotta get ready for kookread now (see below).

done with edit number three

am currently at 46.105 characters including spaces. still not much, but already 10.000 more than i had after the second edit. feel a little lost now that this round is over, but i need to pack and walk the neighbours' dog soon.

WOAW turns 2. nice.

as WOAW turns two, i am looking back on my relatively unimportant existence as a writer. so far, i haven't written a novel nor published a collection of poetry. i haven't spoken to agents or publishing houses and never finished a first draft of anything substantial. i have completed a meager four short stories and was never truly happy with their final versions.

the heedful ones among you might anticipate year three of WOAW to be no more productive than year two was. well, i wouldn't know. the outcome of undertakings like a sponsored literary journey to zagreb later this year (more details to follow in time) and the mdr literary prize (what are the odds!) will certainly have an impact on my motivation to put my material out there. further out than online, i mean, if that is at all possible.

soon i'll be featured in a reknown german magazine for contemporary literature. they sent an email asking whether i'd like to submit a poem for their next issue. i was asked to submit. just like with that literary trip that i was offered. now that means success to me. and WOAW deserves credit for much of that.

you, too, deserve credit, 'cause if there wouldn't have been a loyal readership out there from the beginning, i might not have stuck with releasing my stuff to the public. and by the way, i have never understood why you guys like my work. i do see how it differs from the rest of them in style, but i do not see how it's comprehendable or just in any way important. i guess it's evidence of sorts, like proof that i have lived here and partaken. even if just as an absentee.

i like to believe that WOAW eases absence. it eases the absence of poets, translators, readers, the absence of words, and the absence of sleep. maybe to some of you even the absence of me. thank you for missing, please stick around.


+ + WOAW is on facebook + + + add WOAW to your google reader + +

Die Spürkönigin

luckily (?), a week-long bed rest allowed me to finish a prose piece to submit at this year's MDR Literatur-Wettbewerb. it's called Die Spürkönigin or The Sensequeen. i started writing it last december already, but only finished its umpteenth edit this afternoon. just in time, as it is, for the MDR competition. as usual, i am not allowed to publish it anywhere until i know whether i made it into the final rounds (wish me luck!), but i figured a paragraph of it in english could hardly hurt. so here goes:

I'll count up to hundred, that's what he said everytime I had asked him how long it would take us to get to the peak still, or rather the topmost spot, really, for the mountain wasn't much of a mountain in the actual sense of the word, but rather a stump hill. For a long time now rain's silver threads had made our pants stick to our knees, and even though we wore soles specially made for that kind of bad weather hiking, we slipped off the fields.

WOAW has its own facebook group!

if you care to join, please find it here.

in addition to what i publish here on the blog,
i will post music clips over there from time to time.
=> soon, there will be a WOAW playlist, too.
awesome, innit?

AB JETZT: rumproleten !

i have been invited to blog for metroprolet, which is super. i have promised to deliver two posts a week, which is more than i am posting here on WOAW at the moment. i am hoping that a little professional pressure will increase my textual output. i know, i've said this many times before, but this time it's different, 'cause no one likes to let their peers down, right? i will blog in german over there, by the way. that's a first and should be mighty interesting.

speaking of which: ernesto castillo and johannes jansen will read at the labor in neukölln next friday, 12 december 2008. 8 pm onwards, i think.

oh yeah, and don't forget my own reading on 16 december 2008 at the rumpelofen/ kaffee burger. i am currently working on a prose text for that, so you'll get to hear fresh material.

reading no. 1 in berlin!

needless to say, my nanowrimo is not going anywhere. i have been busy furnishing my apartment, baking cakes and buying furniture. like i said. i am also in the process of founding a little company.

i am planning on getting back to writing very soon, when i have more time to myself again.

on 16 december 2008, however, the rumpelofen will host my first reading in berlin. it will take place in my beloved kaffee burger. with johannes jansen i am in excellent company yet again.

if you can, please do come by. it's cheap.

WORTLAUT 2008: DAS FEST!

friends, if you want to meet me before i move to berlin, you should attend the

WORTLAUT 2008 FEST

in vienna on 2 october.

poetiken 2008

currently lauter niemand continue their Poetiken series (originally launched in 2002) on their homepage. besides julia trompeter, angela sanmann and kai pohl, i am featured, which is very nice. in addition to the Poetik, they also put up a text sample of each author. mine is Vom Klingeln, a rhyming prose text i wrote in berlin in the early summer of 2007. this is the same text they had chosen for their Lauter Niemand publication of november 2007.

my initial idea was to create a Poetik that was a collage of comments that close friends of mine made on my work. yet although i got great (and very flattering) responses, it turned out to be virtually impossible to amalgamte them into one single new prose text. each statement was far too original and powerful in its own right. so i held on to them until now. and even though - frankly - i would have liked to censor some of them, i decided to put them on this blog unedited*:

Das ist schon gar nicht mehr Literatur. Das ist schon eigentlich... wieder gut.
Sie ist unbedarft, das muss ich sagen. Ja, unbedarft. Und dann auch wieder... als hätte sie's gewusst. So rotzig es manchmal scheint, man merkt doch gleich: es ist liebevoll.
Es ist zu Gedicht, um Slam zu sein.

Gott sei dank hast Du aufgeschrieben was wir getan haben! Ich ahnte wohl, dass es intensiv war, aber durch die Ordnung Deiner Worte wurden mir die erst die gesamte Intensivität fassbar!

Anders als für Sirin, für den das Auto immer nur ein Mittel gewesen sein soll um stehen zu bleiben, -( «400 Kilometer durch eine bedrückende Landschaft auf der Suche nach ferniensis; 200 Kilometer für drei nielithea» soll seine Frau von einem Ausflug nach Kansas vermerkt haben), - spricht es für das postfeministische Selbstvertrauen der Autorin mit welcher Selbverständlichkeit von - teilweise tätowierten - Männern gesteuerte Personenkraftwagen zu rollenden Chill-Out-Zone werden und lässt eher Kombis mit Holzchassis assozieren, denn ein so gewöhnungsbedürftiges bis bockiges oder gar rassiges Gefährt wie den neuen Toyota M5 oder die langläufige Non-Chalance eines Ford Pick Up Trucks namens Taccoma.

Too many shortcuts! / Zu viele Abkürzungen !

ich lese deine texte gern, weil sie sprachlich wirklich eigenständig sind. ich liebe deine ungewöhnlichen bilder, die du für menschen und situationen schaffst, mit denen du sie beschreibst, und bin immer wieder überrascht und erstaunt, aus welchem blickwinkel du die dinge siehst. dein feines gespür für beziehungsfäden und stimmungsnuancen zeigt sich sowohl in der wortwahl als auch in der entscheidung für das tempo, das den einzelnen text charakterisiert. manche verdichtungen in deinen gedichten kann ich zwar nicht ganz entschlüsseln, aber es schwingt immer ein besonderes bild, eine aussergewöhnliche wortverbindung, eine von dir geschaffene stimmung nach.

Aufschlussreich autobiographisch.

"Es ist weich um mich, es wird immer weich um mich sein". Diese beiden Schlüsselsätze drücken die dem Leben und Werk innewohnende positive Kraft der jungen Autorin trefflich aus.

In den Rhythmus eintauchen. Vor lauter Rhythmus den Inhalt vergessen und manchmal ist es gut. Der Rhythmus oder der Inhalt?
Zuhören. Dabeisein. Weiterlesen.
Hoffen, dass das Schreiben einfach so - und nicht anders - passieren wird.


*this, of course, has been agreed upon by all the authors.