German Poets and Prizes

The dam has broken and prizes are going to poets! Following Jan Wagner's surprising receipt of the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair after everyone thought even nominating a poet was an act of iconoclastic tokenism, they've gone and done it again. This time it's the Kleist Prize for Monika Rinck. Rinck has published mainly poetry and essays but also some rather odd other things, and you can find quite a lot of her poems in Nicolas Grindell's English translations at no man's land if you click on the first link above.

The Kleist Prize is an interesting one because it's awarded by a different individual every year, to all kinds of writers for their entire work. I kind of like the idea because it means there are no compromises. This year it was the president of the German Academy of Language and Literature, Heinrich Detering, who chose to bestow a big fat €20,000 on Rinck. Hooray!

And then – perhaps less surprisingly – there's another German poet on the poetry shortlist for the Best Translated Book Award: Farhad Showghi for End of the City Map, tr. Rosmarie Waldrop. The winners are announced on 27 May.

Incidentally, Jan Wagner's Regentonnenvariationen made it to number 5 on the Spiegel bestseller list after he won the Leipzig prize and spent several weeks in the charts. That hasn't happened to a poet before; not even Tranströmer after he won the Nobel.

Leipzig Book Fair Prize to Poet Jan Wagner

Well, there you are. What a funny day. They've gone and given the "literature" category of the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair to Jan Wagner for his poetry collection Regentonnenvariationen. You can read one of Iain Galbraith's also award-winning translations of his work here, or wait for the book Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees to come out next month.

Unwisely, perhaps, the taz just ran a piece about how a few other poets got a bit antsy (geddit) about Wagner's nomination. I think Wagner is a delightfully accessible poet with lovely skin, who's worked hard to get to this position – the first poet to win Germany's second-biggest prize for a single title, which usually goes to either a novel or a short story collection. And it's not like he nominated himself. He gave a sweet little speech, all shocked and overwhelmed and his nice skin all flushed.

Leipzig Book Prize Nominations

They've announced the shortlists for the three prizes awarded at the Leipzig Book Fair. The non-fiction list looks a little dry and male, except that one of the authors is rather attractive and another one is Rainer Stach with his latest Kafka book, so obviously that one will win. The translation list is interesting in that there are no books translated from English on it, and it varies from Lucretius to Modiano to the Swedish children's classic The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson.

And here's the fiction shortlist:

Ursula Ackrill: Zeiden, im Januar
         A short novel set in Siebenbürgen, one of the German-speaking enclaves in Rumania but not the one Herta Müller comes from, during 1941. Rather fabulously, the author is a librarian in Nottingham and wrote her PhD on Christa Wolf. If ever there was a book to get picked up by British publishers, this is it. I'm glad the nomination has called attention to it because I for one wouldn't have noticed it otherwise. I shall be reading it.

Teresa Präauer: Johnny und Jean
          You already know I love this book. I'm ecstatic to see it nominated.

Norbert Scheuer: Die Sprache der Vögel
           This seems to be a novel about birdwatching in Afghanistan. I suspect it's less lightweight than Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

Jan Wagner: Regentonnenvariationen
             Surprise of the year, so far – a poetry collection shortlisted for a fiction prize! Jan Wagner is one of the German poets I can get my head around, so this makes me happy too. 

Michael Wildenhain: Das Lächeln der Alligatoren
             I like Wildenhain's writing a lot. He very precisely conjures up West Berlin in the seventies and earlier, a time that was very exciting and hasn't been written about as much as it could be. This new novel is set elsewhere but I suspect in the same sort of world, and I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm expecting it to be a literary confirmation that the personal is political.

Well, I don't know about you but I'm quite pleased and excited about this list.

Stephen Spender Prize to Iain Galbraith, Jan Wagner

The Stephen Spender Prize honours poetry translations, which anyone can submit with a brief commentary. There are three age categories, with this year's 14-and-under going to Alexia Sloane and the 18-and-under to Sam Norman. In the "open" category – for adults, in other words – this year's first prize has gone to my friend and teacher Iain Galbraith for a gorgeous rendering of Jan Wagner's poem Quittenpastete/Quince Jelly. Iain also has two poems in the "commended" section, another Wagner one and one by the Austrian poet Peter Waterhouse. German contemporary poetry did very well this year in general, with a Michael Krüger poem translated by Hans-Christian Oeser also commended. Plus one by Rilke, translated by last year's Schlegel-Tieck Prize winner Ian Crockatt.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I have problems with some German contemporary poetry. Read aloud, which is the main way I consume it, it often seems so cryptic to me – filtered through my language issues, perhaps – that I wonder what's the point of publishing it, if no one else in the world has the vaguest chance of understanding anything. The work of Jan Wagner (and indeed Peter Waterhouse and Michael Krüger) is different: when I hear it, or read it, I understand something of what it's about, to me at least. In fact with Wagner there's a lot of other stuff going on, playful trickery with metre and sound and authorship, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating it at first hearing, or first glance. And Iain's versions give a wonderful impression of that initial accessibility with complexity hiding underneath – the winning poem is written in Sapphic stanzas, for goodness' sake, but you still get a moment out of someone else's life and an appreciation of nature's bounty. Tangy. I assume that takes a very long time to get right.

I once stood very close to Jan Wagner at a crowded event – I don't know him personally – and admired his lovely skin. Next year Arc Publications will be publishing a collection of his poems in Iain Galbraith's translation, Self-portrait with a Swarm of Bees.

Maintenant

3:AM magazine has a poetry section, I have just discovered. Called Maintenant, it covers a large range of European poets featuring interviews and translations of their work. The interviews I've read by SJ Fowler are well-informed and interesting (although proofreading might have done some of them good). I approve.

Check out the interviews with Ulf Stolterfoht, Anatol Knotek, Daniele Pantano and Ann Cotten from the German-speaking world. Unfortunately you'll have to search through of your own accord because there I can't find long links. One piece is also available at Poetry International, a fascinating interview with Jan Wagner - which, however, doesn't stand alone too well as it seems to locate him at the top of some imaginary pyramid of Young German Poets without the context of the other interviews. And although I personally find Jan Wagner one of the most accessible of Young German Poets, he isn't really quite the lone star he comes across as in Fowler's questions here.

Well worth reading.