German Poetry Now: A bilingual online-anthology, featured by DAS GEDICHT chapbook
Tanja Dückers
The globe
The slightly tilted globe
upon her desk
leaning the Pacific towards her
Only gravity is holding back its calm waters
from her laptop
barely though
I’ve always asked myself
how she bears it all this blue turquoise blue
interrupted merely by the thin seams
of deep oceanic trenches
How she bears it
while writing
Behind the globe the thick curtains
the spider webs
with dayfly ideas caught up in them
translated by Paul-Henri Campbell
+ German Original / Das OriginalTanja Dückers
Der Globus
Der leicht geneigte Globus
auf ihrem Schreibtisch
weist mit dem Pazifik zu ihr
Nur die Schwerkraft hält noch seine leisen Wasser
knapp über ihrem Laptop
zurück
Fragte mich schon immer
wie sie das aushält all dieses Blau Türkis Blau
nur unterbrochen von den dünnen Narben
der Tiefseegräben
Wie sie das aushält
Beim Schreiben
Hinter dem Globus die dichten Gardinen
die Netze von Spinnen
mit Eintagsideen darin
© Tanja Dückers, Berlin
aus: DAS GEDICHT Bd. 22 / Oktober 2014
+ About the author / Zum Autor
Tanja Dückers was born in 1968 in West Berlin. She grew up in West Berlin during the Cold War. Tanja Dückers studied Dutch and German literature as well as art history and North America studies in Berlin and Amsterdam. She also visited the United States for an extended period of time. She is a prolific journalist and isn’t a stranger to New Journalism. She also pursued an academic career abroad. As a literary writer, she embraced residencies in places such as Los Angeles, Bristol, Bucharest, Barcelona, Paris, and Prague. This rich firsthand experience of the world’s diversity doesn’t enter her poetic work as an enthusiastic amazement of otherness, but is presented in the tone of a witness who is forever somewhat unsettled, but also mildly entertained by the sizzling excitement of new terrain – this is particularly evident in Dückers’ new book »Fundbüros und Verstecke« (Lost-and-Founds and Hideouts, Frankfurt 2012). Tanja Dückers, however, is a polymorphic author. She published in virtually every genre, including theater, interview, essay, and cryptography. She is an opinionated commentator on cultural and political issues and a serious mind when it comes to education or German history or social justice, as her thought-provoking essays show – collected in »Morgen nach Utopia« (Berlin 2007).
»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« im Archiv
»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« is an online collection of contemporary German-language poetry in English translation. All poems were taken from issue no. 22 of the German poetry magazine DAS GEDICHT, focused on the Poetry of Things. New English translations by Paul-Henri Campbell as well as the German originals are published here every Wednesday. All poems of this online-collection are also published in a special print-edition. In order to read previous poems in this series, click here.
»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« ist eine Online-Sammlung zeitgenössischer deutschsprachiger Dinggedichte in englischer Übersetzung. Alle Texte sind Band 22 der Zeitschrift DAS GEDICHT entnommen. Jeden Mittwoch erscheint ein neues Gedicht, das von Paul-Henri Campbell ins Englische übertragen wurde, zusammen mit dem deutschen Original. Die Beiträge dieser Online-Anthologie gibt es auch als Sonderausgabe in Buchform. Alle bereits erschienenen Folgen von »Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« finden Sie hier.
»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« im Archiv
