Highlight: Lyrikline

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Übersetzungen, Berlin, Blog, culture, Gedichte, languages, literature, poetry, Sprachen, translation

Poetic translations from Berlin into more than 50 languages

For years now, the literaturWERKstatt berlin has been staging an annual Summer Night’s Poetry Festival called “Weltklang”. This is the largest poetry event in Germany featuring poets from home and abroad. Parallel to that, the literaturWERKstatt berlin has set up a poetry platform on the Internet which regularly presents collections of poetry read by the authors themselves: Lyrikline.org

Lyrikline’s declared intention is to exploit the multimedia experience the Internet offers (text, image, sound) so as to increase the dissemination, popularity, reception and sales of poetry – and the translation of poems: Started as a German-language poetry platform, the webpage itself now opens in 5 language versions: german, english, french, slovakian and arabic and includes poems and translations inover 50 languages, with more than 10.000 translated poem online, some links:

• Lyrikline website in English
• Latest voices
• German poets at lyrikline
• Lyrikline blog

Highlight: Mike Crowl

Backpfeifengesicht

English speakers have no word for
a face that badly needs a punch.

The German compound word is
Backpfeifengesicht

Which could easily seem to mean
a face like a smelly drain

Though transliterally it’s close to
a back-pipe face, which isn’t

Complementary. And
on the face of it, the word looks like

Bagpipes make me sick¸though
since I have a friend who’s learning

To play the bagpipes, using
Backpfeifengesicht

In a pretended translation
seems likely to bring me to a

Place where I might well have
a face that badly needs a punch.

*

Mike Crowl is a New Zealand writer whose musical, Grimhilda! (which he composed and co-wrote), was performed in Dunedin in late April-early May this year. He writes on several blogs. His poems more often have a tongue-in-cheek flavour more than a serious one. He has also been experimenting with more traditional poetic forms over the last year.

Of his poem Backpfeifengesicht, Mike says: I discovered the word, Backpfeifengesicht, while reading Twitter. It struck me as an ideal word to weave a humorous poem around. My ‘guide to pronunciation’ in my blog post  about this poem is very approximate.

Highlight: Vaughan Gunson

dialogue

she did an impression of a German comedian.

I did an impression of a French mime.

she explained herself.

I said, “I didn’t know him.”

she said he was really funny.

leaning her face close to mine
with her eyes very wide,
“Berlin,” she said, “is a horrible city.”

she was from Hanover,
studied in Hamburg,
second richest city in Germany
after Munich.

“I know Hamburg—The Beatles.”

“they’ve built a memorial square.”

“I wouldn’t want to see that.”
“what’s wrong with Berlin?” I asked.

“it’s still divided. I don’t like it.”

“isn’t everywhere divided?”

“no, not here.”

“you think?”

“yes, I love it here.”

she told me a joke
I didn’t understand.

*

Vaughan Gunson is a writer living in Hikurangi, Northland. His poems have been published in a number of publications in New Zealand. He teaches art history at NorthTec in Whangarei and is the curator of the campus gallery. More of Vaughan’s poetry can be found at falling away from blue.