The poetic work of CAConrad (born 1966 in Topeka Kansas), which includes famous books such as While Standing in Line for Death and Amanda Paradise (Wave Books 2017 and 2021), is characterized by a ritual writing practice called (soma)tics. The result is a poetry that, in CAConrad’s own words, “investigates the seemingly infinite space between body and spirit by using nearly any possible THING around or of the body to channel the body out and/or in toward spirit with deliberate and sustained concentration.” This system is overflowing and interconnects everything with everything (but is especially an invocation of the dead and extinct animal species). “Poetry is the study of everything,” reads one of the poems, and elsewhere they state: “I have loved loosened my wilderness.” CAConrad’s writing and life blend seamlessly and elude any external categorization: “Telling someone who they are instead of asking is where extinction gets its start.”

In the poem “Self Portrait as a Rainbow Boy” by the Nigerian poet Logan February (born 1999 in Anambra), we can read: “ My spectrum has its roots in disturbia, with hues from yellowed bruises to bloodshot eyes from crying too much.” February writes poems that appear through a dialogue with Sappho, Sylvia Plath, Miriam Makeba, and Maggie Nelson. They involve mythical spirits that are cyclically reborn and Àse, the Yorùbá concept of a metaphysical life force that is closely connected to language. There are tales of the stoning of a homosexual boy and of the attack on a gay night club in Orlando where 49 people lost their lives. But these poems are also about absent fathers (“your father never shows up when you need him. This way he, too, is God.”), beautiful boys “made of ravens,” transformations, lonely bodies, and hands dancing in worry. February’s work has been described as a “bold and fiercely defiant worship of the black, queer body. Edgy and vibrant, this is layered and deeply conceptual poetry with confessional intones and fatalistic intents” (Dami Ajayi). At the festival, February will read poems from Mental Voodoo (Engeler Verlage 2024, translated into German by Christian Filips with Peter Dietze).

Harry Josephine Giles (born 1986 in Orkney) is a Scottish performer, poet, and singer. Her first two poetry collections Tonguit and The Games (2015 and 2018) have been nominated for numerous awards. Her breakthrough came with the volume Deep Wheel Orcadia (Picador Poetry 2021), a queer science fiction verse novel that was written in the Orkney dialect and was awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction. According to the award citation, Deep Wheel Orcadia is “the sort of book that makes you rethink what science fiction can do and makes the reading experience feel strange in a new and exciting way. It’s as if language itself becomes the book’s hero.” In her poems, Giles often playfully engages with gender identities. She writes that gender is a small purple flower only found on the Orkney Islands or in the north of Scotland with two flowering seasons. Giles’ new poems are populated with mythological figures (Thanatos, Zagreus, Magaera, etc.), who become embroiled in polyamorous adventures.

Lisa Jeschke (born 1985 in Munich) made their first appearance with the book Die Anthologie der Gedichte betrunkener Frauen, which was originally written in English (The Anthology of Poems by Drunk Women, MATERIALS 2018) and then translated into German in an expanded version by the author (hochroth Munich 2019). These are texts that are highly political and were trained by the English school. “Homeland Horror Poems” are contained therein, straight from “Germany Shredder” and featuring characters like Pegida-Lutz, the “fucking protein angel of history,” and reflections on the heart-hearth complex, where the difference between genders is traced back to its economic core. Critic Florian Kessler writes: “Jeschke’s poems launch an attack on all forms of systematics even down to the varying font sizes.” On this evening, they will read poems from the chapbook Left Freedom (Critical Documents 2024).

Moderation: Luca Mael Milsch

The event will be interpreted into English and German. With the kind support of ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen

Project management: Jutta Büchter