Berlin Poetry Lecture • 2022-06-19, 7:30 PM
Michèle Metail (born in Paris in 1950) will trace the history of her own work in 17 chapters: from the “infinite poem,” beginning with a continually-renewing chain of composites, to the “purely oral publications,” which define a text as a “tossing of the word into space,” to the “topographical poems” and the multipart “gigantextes.”
Also elaborated on: Métail’s interlude in the Oulipo group (as one of only five women), her influences in experimental music and the combination of word and image – as well as texts written after her extensive travels through China. The lecture is conceived as a kind of “walking tour,” in the style of Berlin flâneurs. Road signs and signs from inland waterway transport offer (apparent) orientation in the labyrinth that is this breadth of work. Using her artistic career as an example, Métail will sketch a poetics of the “in-between,” in which the poem is transformed into a “riddle with multiple solutions.”
Michèle Métail will deliver the speech in German.
“Die Zwischensprache” will be published for the event in German and English (translated by Shane Anderson) by Wallstein Verlag (13,90€). Deutschlandfunk Kultur will broadcast a recording of the speech.
SU 19.6. | 19.30 | Halle 3 | 10/7 €
With Michèle Métail, poet France
Project leader: Matthias Kniep
with Métail, Michèle
The poesiefestival berlin is a project of the Haus für Poesie in cooperation with the Akademie der Künste, with support from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.