stadtsprachen magazin - multilingual literature from Berlin

The new online magazine for the multilingual contemporary literary literature of Berlin celebrated its first release in April 2017. Berlin's living writers, who do not write their texts in German, are the focus of the city's language magazine. Presented at www.stadtsprachen.de will be 26 texts by 22 authors and more than 21 translators in 13 languages, from Arabic to Georgian to Yoruba! In the original and mostly with German translation the texts are also available in several languages like English, Spanish or French etc. 

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The author of the first edition of the city's language magazine: Rasha Abbas, Juhméké Bọlanle Adéyanju, Esther Andradi, Kevin Shih-Hung Chen, Dario Deserri, Dmitri Dragilev, The Dung, Federico Federici, Iunona Guruli, Andrej Hočevar, Tolgahan Kaftan, Kenan Khadaj , Göksu Kunak, Rafael Mantovani, Steve Mekoudja, Luísa Nóbrega, Denise Pereira, Elsye Suquilanda, Menekşe Toprak, Kinga Tóth, Yimeng Wu and Érica Zíngano. 

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The following edition of the onlie magazine is expected to be published on June 8, 2017. Further editions are currently being prepared. (The editors gladly accept text proposals and blog contributions from non-German-speaking Berlin based authors.) 

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The central concern of the STADTSPRACHEN is to raise the view that German literature is not only written in German (actually since centuries). The magazine finds out the most exciting authors and their texts of the multilingual Berlin literary scene by translating their texts and make them accessible online as well as presenting them in regular readings and symposia! 

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Welcome to a discovery trip to the unexplored literary treasures of the current Berlin literature scene! 
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www.stadtsprachen.de

www.facebook.com/city languages

twitter.com/stadtsprachen

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Contact: >> Birger Hoyer, Joey Bahlsen (editors of stadtsprachen magazin): info@stadtsprachen.de >> Anna Giannessi (press officer): presse@stadtsprachen.de >> Martin Jankowski (publisher): info@berliner-literarische-aktion.de 
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Berlin Literary Action, Kastanienallee 2, 10435 Berlin, Tel .: 030 - 53 15 59 63

On Indonesian Literature ...

With Indonesia, a country will present itself as guest of honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the fall of 2015 (the world's lagest book fare in general), wich's literature in the Western perception plays only a minor role and is a widely unknown in the global literature. This > big Unknown < Martin Jankowski approaches in his new book »Reading Indonesia" by various essays and interviews and takes a closer look at the stylistically and geographically extremely high contrasted heterogeneous literary landscape of the country. Discussions, articles and essays (2002-2014) explore the social background of the Indonesian literature's cultural complexity and provide an introductory overview of this overwhelmingly large scene.

Release date: 17 September 2014. (195 pages, paperback, size 210 x 130 mm, ISBN 978-3-940132-66-6, In German language. MORE.)

Roberto Yanez in Berlin ...

On Friday, Nov 1st, the German-Chilean poet and painter Roberto Yanez from Santiago de Chile visited our literary salon at Kollwitzplatz in Berlin. He read some new poems on the occassion of launching his first German poetry book "Frühlingsregen" (Insel Verlag/Suhrkamp 2013) which is illustrated by his own paintings. (He also launched an exhibition of his pictures later in Berlin.) The special thing about Roberto: He is the grandson of Margot an Erich Honecker, last heads of state of the GDR until the time of the fall of the wall in 1989. Of course Roberto is tightly related to his grandparents until today but in a personal not in a political way. (Erich Honecker died in Chile in 1993, Margot is still alive an in a constant contact with him.) Roberto abruptly left Berlin with his family and went to Chile for good when he was 15 years old.

  Now it was for the first time that he came back to Germany and his hometown Berlin. As a poet who was pursued by the socialist secret service of the GDR (Stasi) at this time it was a pleasure for me now, after 23 years, to invite Roberto, who became a poet too in the meantime, for a reading to our salon ... (HERE a link to a song i wrote about his grandfather in 1989...)

And THIS is his song about his personal reunion with Berlin ...

What was up at the FLUPP in Rio?

From 7 to 11 November 2012 Rio de Janeiro's first literature festival in a favela (in Prazares at St. Teresa) took place: FLUPP! It was really an EXTRAORDINARY FESTIVAL because the audience and the concept was quite different from anything else in the world. I took part there in the program of "poets between bombs and spys" to talk about my experiences in the East German oppositional movement of 1989 in Leipzig (which lead to the fall of the wall in Berlin). THIS is what I answered to the question of the very engaged favela TV during the festival ... 

There is a detailed German blog written by me and illustrated with many photos about every day of the festival (see links - german blog).  The teeangers of the favela neighbourhood Prazares painted a quote from the lyrics of my song "sekundenfest" (from the novel "Rabet") an the stairs of their way to the top of the hill in Rio - St Teresa... (Brasilian-Portuguese version by Carlos Abbenseth; to read from the bottom stair to the top.) Muito obrigado, thank you Flavio, Charles & the others!! And congratulations to Toni Marques and his engaged team for this unique successful event.

 

FLUPP has now been nominated for the Make a Difference Award, which is an annual award given by O Globo newspaper. 

O Globo is part of Organizações Globo, the largest news and entertainment media group in Brazil and one of the largests in the world.

Some Brasilian press articles in Portuguese language concering this:

O segundo dia da FLUPP - Globo (Rio de Janeiro),  10. November 2012

FLUPP no Morro dos Prazares - machete online, 9. November 2012
 
Arte entre bombas opressao e espioes - FLUPP Blog, 9. November 2012

Novas vozes da periferia - Globo (Rio de Janeiro),  3. November 2012

Norwich Showcase – March 9 to 13 2012

The welcoming by our hosts, the British Council and the Norwich Writers Center, was well organized. Immediately after arriving at the campus of the University of East Anglia (15 min outside Norwich) spring started: The loans got fresh and green, daffodils began to blossom, birds choirs intonated their newest compositions and lots of happy rabbits fearlessly jumped over the campus hills… no joke.
  All guests were accommodated at the nice Broadview lodge having a really broad view on the gentle landscape around the campus. In the evening, after poetry readings by local poets at the modern wooden side hall of the Norwich cathedral, we had our getting-to-know-dinner at the same location. I was shocked to meet so many crazy literature activists like me: festival makers and project managers, most of them authors or publishers themselves, from all over the world. In our discussions I learned that we really share the same obsessions, problems and hopes, no matter if we come from Brasil, Bangladesh, Canada, the Caribbean, Japan, Malaysia, India, Uganda, Egypt, Israel etc. (Its always too less money, too much pressure from political and commercial sides and too much burocracy…)
 The schedule was fully packed: 4 days we listened to the presentations of our colleagues and to several readings and discussions presenting newest British literature nearly all around the clock: New poetry and fiction, translations and new forms of presenting literature were discussed. It was always a lot of information and a flood of impressions but never boring. Sometimes the fast-talking enthusiasm of the British made it hard for a non-native speaker to follow all those ambitious and very engaged contributions. I was looking for interesting new writers as well as for new forms of presenting literature - and I found it. For the novelists Anjali Joseph and Yvette Edwards, for instance, we might soon find German publishers. And I hope I will be able to invite poets like Emily Berry or Kei Miller soon to Berlin. Maybe a Translation Slam or a Literary Death Match really keeps what its title promises and we can do it in Berlin too? (By the way, many events were live-streamed or are podcasted on the British Councils webside see above.)
  The contacts with my colleagues will surely lead to new cooperation. Good food, good talks and the sophisticated and charming moderation of Chris Gribble from the NWC and his colleagues made this meeting work in a nearly perfect way. Getting in direct contact with colleagues from all over the British Council’s universe is definitely helpful and extraordinarily pleasuring for me. Thanks Rachel Stevens for your always kind assistance. Dear Susie Nicklin, your table-talk-theory that English novels are internationally so much more successful than German novels because they are so much better is worth a further discussion. Thank you, British Council! But unfortunately the program was so interesting and packed that we missed most of the extremly beautiful spring presentation that you prepared for us outside...