Thursday 29 March, 7:30 pm
Earth Fell on my Sentences
A Chance Journey around the World
Ulrike Juza worked as a copywriter for big advertising agencies in Vienna. In 2010 she quit her jobs and ventured out into the world with almost nothing but an open heart. This night Ulrike Juza will read and tell in her unique poetic way about her encounters with countries, cultures and myths and her deep love for the planet Earth.
Earth Fell on my Sentences is her journal about a chance journey around the globe that happened to her as she stepped out the door, followed a heartbeat around the corner and then around the next. She had no set plan, guidebook, or map, just her trust and whichever bus or boat came along.
„As I went, I wrote, and soil, salt, and sand mixed with my sentences. This is my gift back to the Earth and its people.“
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Friday, April 13th, at 7.30 pm
New Words in Old Form
Linguistic delights presented by Jan van Oort
If you are convinced that the only famous poets are dead ones, you are probably right. If you think that classical poetry is dead, however, you may be wrong. English-writing, Austria-based poet Jan van Oort goes back to such classical forms as the Pushkin sonnett, the Neruda ode and Anglo-Saxon heroic verse - to write about such subjects as the Voyager I Space Probe, a horse, the fate of seven pilgrims in the 28th century, love, or a simple girl's quest for a way to live. His poems shun modernity in form, but not in subjects or choice of words.
Jan is a software engineer with a mathematical background, living in Mödling, near Vienna. The manuscript of his epic "Augusta: Heroine verse" is currently with Faber and Faber, London.
Have a drink and listen to Jan, offering his liguistic delights.
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Thursday 22nd March, 7.30 pm*
A Diary of Pique, 1983 – 1984
Intimate insights in free verse
Carl Djerassi opens his personal poetic diary,
which he kept during a traumatic time in his life.
A Diary of Pique, 1983 – 1984 –– Ein Tagebuch des Grolls, 1983 – 1984, bilingual English and German Edition, Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck-Wien, 2012
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German-American Poets
Perform in Vienna
Friday, 10 February, 19:30
Shakespeare and Company, Sterngasse 2
Three American poets currently living in Germany will read their work at this one night only English language event. This is a unique opportunity to see these diverse poets perform together. Come for a night of poetry and cross-cultural conversations!
Paul-Henri Campbell Rebecca Farivar Angela Hume
Paul-Henri Campbell is the author of duktus operandi (ATHENA-Verlag, 2010), the first volume
of his trilogy of lyrical verse, Sounding Out Today, and Mein Wahn Straße (fhl Verlag, 2011),
a collection of short stories.
Rebecca Farivar is the author of Correct Animal (Octopus Books, 2011) and the chapbook American Lit (Dancing Girl Press, 2011).
Angela Hume is the author of the chapbook Second Story of Your Body
(Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2011).
Thursday 19th January 19.30
Travels Through Absence -Letters from a European City
Christopher Thomson
Lovers separated. A letter written. A lonely voice echoes weakly from within the hollow structures of the city. It calls for a glance over a shoulder, for a memory. Journey through questions of identity across the great cities of Europe: Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Stockholm, Budapest, Lisbon, Istanbul and many more. In this meticulously researched collection of moods and symmetries, Christopher Thomson layers up an alternative narrative for the European city of today, crafting a series of intimate reflections on each. Written over years of experience, a travel book like no other.
Christopher is based in Dordolla, a village in the fold of the map and the mountains of Italy, surrounded by the sing-song of the encroaching forest and multitude of languages. He grew up in London but has lived and worked across the continent.
He is concerned by the absence of memory and the slide of identity, because without the fortification of these, based on landscape and learning, the force-fed nonsense of nationality, ethnicity, the worship of power and other controlling sentiments become all the more dangerous. A stroll around Europe describes all too clearly the highly flammable nature of our situation. He is grateful to travel above all it taught him empathy.
