German Poetry Now: A bilingual online-anthology, featured by DAS GEDICHT chapbook
Odile Kennel
»When I close my eyes,
the sky is an excavator«*
yellow, its bucket so large
you can fit the world in it. It’s the god
among all excavators on earth. They worship him
with every clackety-clack in their joints
their choral muck-raking is a riot
against their conditio technica, their howling
within the rage of the construction sites an exultation
overtone singing for divine ears.
They raise their shovels in a common tempo
high up into the sky, but that rhythm
would only be heard from above
if you yourself were god, heaven or
an excavator with the size of the heavens.
(Maybe children sense the hardships
excavators suffer or they want to be god
who operates the shovels.) I open
my eyes, the sky is an enormous
shovel, yellow, hanging
from the joints of the cosmos.
* The title is taken from a poem by Carl-Christian Elze.
translated by Paul-Henri Campbell
+ German Original / Das OriginalOdile Kennel
»wenn ich die Augen schließe,
ist der Himmel ein Bagger«*
gelb, seine Schaufel so groß
dass die Welt hineinpasst. Er ist der Gott
aller Bagger auf Erden. Ihn beten sie an
mit jedem Klackklack ihrer Gelenke
ihr chorisches Wühlen ist ein Wüten
gegen ihre conditio technica, ihr Jaulen
im Tosen der Baustellen ein Jauchzen
Obertonsingen für göttliche Ohren.
Im Gleichtakt recken sie ihre Greifer
zum Himmel empor, doch diesen Takt
nähme man nur von dort oben aus wahr
wenn man selbst Gott wäre, Himmel oder
ein Bagger in der Größe des Himmels.
(Vielleicht ahnen Kinder die Nöte
der Bagger oder sie wollen Gott sein
der die Schaufeln bedient.) Ich öffne
die Augen, der Himmel ist eine riesige
Schaufel, gelb, hängt
am Gelenk des Alls
* Der Gedichttitel ist ein Zitat von Carl-Christian Elze.
© Odile Kennel, Berlin
aus: DAS GEDICHT Bd. 22 / Oktober 2014
+ About the author / Zum Autor
Odile Kennel was born 1967 in Bühl (Baden). She was raised bilingually French-German. She studied political science and cultural studies at Universities in Tübingen, Berlin, and Lisbon, and she attended the Universities of Dijon and Bucharest where she earned a degree in cultural management. Given that background, she gained a reputation as a translator of French, Portuguese, and Spanish literature and presented her German readership with first ever renditions of work by authors such as the Brazilians Érica Zingano, Ricardo Domeneck, and Angélica Freitas, or the Cuban writer Damaris Calderón. Odile Kennel has been invited to residencies from Swabia to Sweden. Her award-winning Novel »Was Ida sagt« (Munich 2011) is an emotional tour de force that sounds out the question of European identity, by placing its protagonist Louise in a prism of history, the place of birth, and a biography of migration that leads from the streets of Berlin onto the shores of Normandy, shifting from the present era to the 1930s and back. Her poetry collection, entitled »oder wie heißt diese interplanetare Luft« (Munich 2013), is marked by a versatile command of a wide range of poetic techniques and a broad thematic scope. It puts forth an authentic, at times vulnerable, though self-asserting voice that is replete with attitude and personality. Odile Kennel’s poetry clearly bears the insignia of postmodernity with its serendipitous embracement of intertextuality and use of fragmented, digressive, meandering, or broken modes of verse narrative.
»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 will also be 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
