Parakentro literally means “out of the centre” and is a cultural centre located high in the mountains of Cyprus. From there Pambos and Costas, a writer and a composer, face the crisis of Cyprus by presenting experimental and different ways of experiencing literature and music.
Tag Archives: literature
Nataša Kramberger (SI): ecology and literature
Nataša is a prize-winning novelist and a literary activist who besides her life as a writer and journalist advocates for the many stories of rural life. Her literary origin is deeply rooted to her upbringing in a small village in Slovenia. She promotes rural life by literature and literary activism derived from oral storystelling, by manufacturing things that are sustainable, that tell a story. She combines literature and ecology. Continue reading Nataša Kramberger (SI): ecology and literature
Maxime Coton (BEL): Simplicity is hard work
Maxime Coton is an author, musician and film maker. He stresses the ordinary; time being generous; repetitious practices in life being in themselves singular and unique moments. Between his two books of poetry several years passed. There was one more collection of short stories this year. Inbetween he decided to make movies and currently he writes a script for the theatre called “vivre virtuel”. The big gestures are not the characterizing bits in his works neither is he drawing the big picture. He extracts the ordinairy as the actually uncommon experience.
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Daniela Seel: „Laboratory for poetry as a form of living“
Daniela Seel is author, publisher, lecturer and critic and one of the matadors of new poetry. When you are looking for new German contemporary voices from poetry you strike a bonanza when you look at the programme of kookbooks. And even though her 2011 published collection of poems is called “ich kann diese stelle nicht wiederfinden” (“i cannot find this passage again”) she constantly proves the opposite, that is that she has found her place pretty well. According to her, poetry should be a form of life rather than an evening entertainment. Continue reading Daniela Seel: „Laboratory for poetry as a form of living“
social fiction 2.0: blind angles on facebook
Social fiction 2.0 is a storytelling experiment expanding over several social media channels in video, audio and text. Usually that is called “transmedia storytelling” as you can see in the American TV series „Lost“ or Christian Ulmens „About:Kate“ (Germany). There is but one difference to social fiction 2.0. The story of Anne Utz shows who has the right to speak on fb and the like and who has not. Without doubt it is no media strategy but politicial theatre.
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Satu Taskinen (FI): „I try to add to awareness.“
Satu is described as an author who writes about the European middle class and thus writes European literature. One could say that she adds to awareness by pointing out the limitations of our knowledge and ambitions. What does “perfect” in her novel “The perfect Schweinsbraten” then mean? An e-mail interview.
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Ondřej Buddeus (CZ): „Spread the wor(l)ds“
Ondřej is a writer, translator and editor based in Prague, Czech. His poetry often deals and plays with roles and identities (see the picture above) and conventional language pieces, objets trouvé, of our everyday life. Continue reading Ondřej Buddeus (CZ): „Spread the wor(l)ds“
Ernesto Estrella (ES/USA): What is that voice?
Ernesto writes poetry, performs in several contexts philosophical lectures, is a publisher and musician and an educator. Polyphony, here and there. He uses a variety of artistic and poetical expressions merging into a reduced room of slight installation-like instances that will show you secretly the mechanics of abstraction. I met Ernesto on a bridge in Berlin, Neukölln.
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Festival Guide: Poetry Moon in Finland
Poetry Moon is a literature festival based in Helsinki, Finland, which will be held from 21st to 27th August 2015 – this is in two weeks, crowdies!
What is special about the festival is the diversity of the events and approaches ranging from events for children to a poetry marathon up to poetry as “fire prevention”. It is a festival aiming at assembling new and other ways of presentation of and participation in literature. Radiophonic collages, creative writing and improvisation or poetry swallowed up by it all: the picture, sound, movement, smell, taste, touch. I would say: get your suitcases ready!
Robert Perisic (HR): Offroad Reflections.
Croatian Bestseller author Robert Perisic talks about the possibility of a European experience. I met him on skype smoking one cigarette after another in a kitchen you could name anything else but cosy. Right now he is doing a residency program in Macedonia having just recently published his new novel “Area without signal”. That was about two weeks ago. One could think that his nerves are quite frayed after the stress. But on the contrary, it turned out that Robert was very relaxed as we were talking about the European literary scene. Like taking a side trip on an unexpected day off we were walking and thinking while staking out space to think, dwelling in ideas and also trudging through the mud of looking for a definition. Arriba, folks, put your shoes on! What can European literature mean?
Continue reading Robert Perisic (HR): Offroad Reflections.