Authors

Laurie Anderson (USA)
Born 1947 in Chicago. Since the 1970s Laurie has been concerned, unlike almost anybody else, with the relationship between different art forms. She has invented a whole new and original form of synaesthetic performance which, in addition to music, poetry and video, also incorporates dance and theatre.

Gabeba Baderoon (South Africa)
Born in 1969 in Port Elizabeth, she is one of South Africa’s most significant young female authors. In her work she tackles mainly questions of identity, the essence of the self and physicality. Her works also have a political aspect. In South Africa poetry has always been a voice during enforced silence, a chance to create socio-political consciousness. Baderoon has won, among other prizes, the Philadelphia City Paper Writing Contest as well as the 2005 DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry.

Chirikuré Chirikuré (Zimbabwe)
Born in 1962, Chirikuré is Africa’s most well-known performer of lyrical poetry. He performs mostly with musicians and traditional African instruments. His performances at the Rotterdam and Medellín poetry festivals were celebrated in equal measure by the press and the public. His works are significant for the unique link between traditional African poetry and song forms with non-African, avant-garde departures. Chirikuré has been forced into exile several times on political grounds.

Michel Deguy (France)
Born in 1930, he is one of the biggest European lyricists of his generation. For a long time he was the Director of the Collège International de Philosophie in Abbaye d’Ardenne. He founded and ran the magazine Po&sie, and ran Les Temps Modernes, founded by Sartre. He links surrealist with classical language forms, which in France is associated with Valéry und Bonnefoy. Noteworthy among numerous prizes are the Prix Mallarmé and the Grand Prix national de la poésie.

Clara Janés (Spain)
Born in 1940 in Barcelona, in Spain she is the most significant lyric poet of her generation. She works as an author, biographer, essayist and translator with her main focus the poetic work of authors Vladimir Holan and Jaroslav Seifert. She has also translated work by Marguerite Duras, Katherine Mansfield and William Golding. In 1997 she picked up, for her complete work, the national prize for translators.

Ko Un (Korea)
Ko Un is arguably the most significant ambassador of contemporary Korean poetry. Born in 1933 in Kunsan, he was in a Buddhist monastery for ten years following the traumatic experience of the Korean War. Not until after the start of his time as a monk did he begin working intensively with poetry and he quickly became one of the leading and most original lyrical poets of his country. Political engagement led to his arrest following the 1980 putsch. Since that time his work has been published in ten languages.

Fabio Morábito (Mexico)
Born in Alexandria in 1955, he writes theme-referenced poetry moulded from the French poet Ponge. The son of Italian parents, his mother tongue is Italian but he composes his work in Spanish. In 1998 Fabio Morábito took part in a DAAD artists programme in Berlin. He wrote the story series “Tambíen Berlín se olvida“ about this experience.

Miodrag Pavlović (Serbia)
Born in 1928 in Novi Sad, he studied medicine in Belgrade and practised as a doctor for several years before becoming a dramatic adviser at the Belgrade National Theatre. Afterwards he worked as a corrector and editor for the Prosveta publishing house. Today he lives in Belgrade and Germany. Released in German are “Usurpatoren des Himmels" (2001) and "Einzug in Cremona" (2002). In May 2003 Miodrag Pavlovic and his translator Peter Urban were honoured with the renowned Preis der Stadt Münster für Europäische Poesie.

Lutz Seiler (Germany)
Born in 1963 in Gera/Thüringen, his debut “berührt/geführt“, published by Oberbaum, appeared in 1995. With “pech & blende“ (2000) Lutz Seiler presented his first collection for the Suhrkamp publishing house, which in September 2000 took the number one spot in the SWR-Bestenliste. The poetry collection “vierzig kilometer nacht“ followed in 2003. He has won numerous prizes for his work, among them the Kranichsteiner Literaturpreis (1999), the Dresdner Lyrikpreis (2000), the Anna-Seghers-Preis (2002), the Ernst Meister-Preis (2003) and the Bremer Literaturpreis (2004).

Christian Uetz (Switzerland)
Born in 1963 in Egnach, he studied philosophy, comparative literature and ancient Greek. Following occasional periods as a teacher near Bodensee, today he lives in Berlin.
He is regularly invited to literature festivals for experimental and spoken poetry, among them the “Festival Internacional de Poesía en Medellín“ in Columbia in 2000. In 1999 he carried off the 3sat-Preis in the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Wettbewerb.