en

3043

Logo lyrikline pure Logo lyrikline claim
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
all results
  • Contact
  • Partners
  • Donation
  • deutsch
  • english
  • français
  • slovenščina
  • العربية
  • русский
  • español
  • português
  • 中文
  • POETS
    • A-Z 
      • A
      • B
      • C
      • D
      • E
      • F
      • G
      • H
      • I
      • J
      • K
      • L
      • M
      • N
      • O
      • P
      • Q
      • R
      • S
      • T
      • U
      • V
      • W
      • X
      • Y
      • Z
    • by languages 
      • afrikaans
        albanian
        amharic
        arabic
        armenian
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        burmese
        catalan
        chinese
        cree
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        dutch
        english
        estonian
        finnish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kalaallisut
        kannada
        korean
        kurdish
        latvian
        lithuanian
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        marathi
        nepali
        norwegian
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        punjabi
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        russian
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        spanish
        swahili
        swedish
        tamil
        telugu
        tswana
        turkish
        ukrainian
        urdu
        uzbek
        vietnamese
        welsh
    • by countries 
      • Albania
        Algeria
        Andorra
        Angola
        Argentina
        Armenia
        Australia
        Austria
        Bahrain
        Bangladesh
        Belarus
        Belgium
        Bolivia
        Bosnia and Herzegovina
        Botswana
        Brazil
        Bulgaria
        Burundi
        Cambodia
        Canada
        Chile
        China
        Colombia
        Congo - Kinshasa
        Costa Rica
        Croatia
        Cuba
        Cyprus
        Czech Republic
        Côte d’Ivoire
        Denmark
        Dominican Republic
        Egypt
        Estonia
        Ethiopia
        Finland
        France
        Georgia
        Germany
        Ghana
        Greece
        Greenland
        Guatemala
        Guinea-Bissau
        Haiti
        Honduras
        Hungary
        Iceland
        India
        Indonesia
        Iran
        Iraq
        Ireland
        Israel
        Italy
        Jamaica
        Japan
        Kenya
        Kuwait
        Latvia
        Lebanon
        Libya
        Lithuania
        Luxembourg
        Macedonia
        Malawi
        Malaysia
        Malta
        Martinique
        Mexico
        Moldova
        Montenegro
        Morocco
        Mozambique
        Myanmar [Burma]
        Netherlands
        New Zealand
        Nigeria
        Norway
        Oman
        Pakistan
        Palestinian Territories
        Paraguay
        Peru
        Poland
        Portugal
        Puerto Rico
        Romania
        Russia
        Saint Lucia
        Saudi Arabia
        Senegal
        Serbia
        Singapore
        Slovakia
        Slovenia
        South Africa
        South Korea
        Spain
        Sri Lanka
        Sweden
        Switzerland
        Syria
        São Tomé and Príncipe
        Taiwan
        Trinidad and Tobago
        Tunisia
        Turkey
        Ukraine
        United Arab Emirates
        United Kingdom
        United States
        Uruguay
        Uzbekistan
        Venezuela
        Vietnam
        Yemen
        Zambia
        Zimbabwe
  • POEMS
    • by languages 
      • afrikaans
        albanian
        amharic
        arabic
        arawak
        armenian
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        burmese
        catalan
        chinese
        cree
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        dutch
        english
        estonian
        finnish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kalaallisut
        kannada
        korean
        kurdish
        latvian
        lithuanian
        lushai
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        maori
        marathi
        nepali
        norwegian
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        punjabi
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        romany
        russian
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        sorbian language
        spanish
        swahili
        swedish
        tamil
        telugu
        tswana
        tumbuka
        turkish
        ukrainian
        urdu
        uzbek
        vietnamese
        welsh
        western frisian
    • in translation 
      • abkhazian
        afar
        afrikaans
        albanian
        arabic
        armenian
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        catalan
        chechen
        chinese
        corsican
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        dutch
        english
        esperanto
        estonian
        finnish
        flemish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        haitian
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kannada
        kashmiri
        kazakh
        korean
        kumyk
        kurdish
        latin
        latvian
        lithuanian
        lushai
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        marathi
        mayan language
        mongolian
        nepali
        norwegian
        occitan
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        romany
        russian
        sardinian
        scots
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        sorbian language
        spanish
        swedish
        swiss german
        tamil
        telugu
        turkish
        udmurt
        ukrainian
        urdu
        vietnamese
        welsh
        yakut
    • genres & aspects
      • experimental poetry
      • concrete poetry
      • sound poetry
      • visual poetry
      • humorous poetry
      • poetry for children
      • performance
      • with music / sound
      • poems on poetics
      • political poetry
      • poetry projects
      • series & cycles
      • dialect
      • erotic poetry
      • narrative poetry
      • spoken word / Rap
      • translingual / hybrid / Pidgin
    • poetic forms & terms
      • ode
      • haiku / tanka
      • collage / montage
      • prose poem
      • rhymed stanza
      • renshi
      • sestina
      • sonnet
      • terza rima
      • villanelle
      • ghazal
      • ballad
    • issues
      • society
        • traditions
        • identity (collective)
        • history
        • homeland
        • cities & urban life
        • economy
        • social critique / cultural criticism
        • politics
        • war
        • exile
      • life & relationship
        • age
        • memory
        • work
        • eating & drinking
        • family
          • birth
          • child
          • mother
          • father
        • friendship
        • gender & sexuality
          • woman
          • man
          • sex & eroticism
          • homosexuality
        • identity (personal)
        • infancy & youth
        • body
        • Dream
        • love
        • travel
        • religion & sprituality
        • death & grief
        • loss & separation
        • illness
        • time
        • alcohol & drugs
        • relationship conflict
        • marriage
        • funeral
      • culture & science
        • architecture & design
        • photography & film
        • art & painting
        • literature & reading
        • fairy-tales & legends
        • music
        • mythology
        • philosophy
        • popular culture
        • language
        • theater & dance
        • medicine & science
        • poetry & poets
        • writing (poetry)
      • nature
        • spring
        • summer
        • fall
        • winter
        • landscape
        • water
        • animals
        • plants
    • Rhythmic Patterns
      • Parlando
      • Cadence
      • Variable Foot
      • Sprung Rhythm
      • Syncopations
      • Rubato
      • Permutations
      • Gestic rhythm (= Stressed Enjambements)
      • Cut-ups
      • Ellipses
      • Syllabic decompositions
      • Lettristic Decomposition
  • NEW
    • Poems
    • Poets
    • Translations
Login
  •  

Christian Hawkey

Elke Allowing the Floor to Rise Up Over Her, Face-Up

  • 1 Elke Allowing the Floor to Rise Up Over Her, Face-Up | Translations: desv
  • 2 Hour | Translations: desv
  • 3 Report From the Undersecretary of Inquests | Translations: desv
  • 4 Unwritten Poems | Translations: desv
  • 5 Hour of Secret Agents | Translations: desv
  • 6 Interlude With Gypsies and Tambourines | Translations: de
  • 7 Not Yet by Lightning | Translations: de
  • 8 Fraulein, can you | Translations: de
  • 9 & then the miniature sheep | Translations: de
  • 10 Slow Waltz Through Inflatable Landscape | Translations: de
Language: english
Translations: german (Elke Allowing the Floor to Rise Up Over Her, Face-Up), swedish (PÅ RYGG LÅTER ELKE GOLVET RESA SIG ÖVER HENNE )
  • play
  • pause
Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.

Elke Allowing the Floor to Rise Up Over Her, Face-Up

Alone in a room with a video camera
means you’re not alone, but lonely.
The floor closed around my lips.
I spoke from a knot. All bodies
are flexible, interlace. A forest
sliced into sections & rearranged
on a horizontal plane: go ahead,
walk on me. I have a wind-up windpipe
vulcanized by the luggage I
arrived with, which is nothing,
nothing special. Swab
my armpits for explosives.
I was never decked out in hairlessness.
The Queen of Spades has the deepest grave.
In the security chute where all passengers
are X-rayed—blue liver, red heart,
white bones—I did a little dance.
I was taken aside. It was a random check.
Yes, by strangers I have received
these hands, unclaimed, these eyes,
unmonitored, these lips
with no return address
in speaking. & those who are shy
would never commit suicide with a gun
because the sound alone
would kill them. Let’s
get a peacock on the squawk box.
Let’s oscillate between
ocelots, one spot at a time.
You can strap a camcorder on the back
of a humpback & all one sees,
at a certain depth, are stars
& beyond the stars, a green, fluorescent mud,
& beneath the mud
a handful of bones, the bones
of a right hand
clutching a flag, the first flag
ever recorded, the flag of the Elamites, from Elam,
whose language remains indecipherable
& whose flag, significantly,
was too small to ever wave
& therefore only waved in private, in praise.

© Wave Books
From: Citizen of
Seattle: Wave Books, 2007
Audio production: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin 2008

Translations:

Language: german

Elke Allowing the Floor to Rise Up Over Her, Face-Up

Allein in einem Raum mit einer Kamera
heißt, du bist nicht allein, nur einsam.
Der Boden umschloss meine Lippen.
Ich sprach aus einem Ast. Alle Körper
sind biegsam, verschränkt. Ein Wald,
in Scheiben geschnitten & als Fläche
ausgelegt: nur zu, lauf auf mir.
Ich habe eine aufziehbare Zunge
vulkanisiert von dem Gepäck
mit dem ich ankam, das ist: nichts,
nichts Besonderes. Durchkämm
meine Achseln nach Sprengstoff.
Ich habe nie haarlos getrumpft.
Die Schippendame hat das tiefste Grab.
In der Schleuse, wo man jeden Fluggast
röntgte – blaue Leber, rotes Herz, weiße
Knochen – führte ich ein Tänzchen auf.
Man nahm mich beiseite. Stichprobe.
Ja, diese Hände erhielt ich von Fremden,
ungewollt, diese Augen,
ungescannt, diese Lippen
ohne Absender
beim Sprechen. & wirklich Schüchterne                   
würden sich nie erschießen:
das Geräusch allein
brächte sie um. Lass uns
Pfauen in Lautsprecher bauen,
uns erden unter
Pferden, Huf zu Huf.
Bindet man eine Kamera auf einen
Finnwal, ist alles, was man sieht,
ab einer bestimmten Tiefe, Sterne
& hinter den Sternen grün leuchtender Schlamm
& unter dem Schlamm
eine Handvoll Knochen, die Knochen
einer rechten Hand,
eine Fahne umklammernd, die erste Fahne
von der je berichtet wurde, die Fahne der Elamiter, aus Elam,
deren Schrift unentzifferbar bleibt
& deren Fahne, bezeichnenderweise,
zu klein war, um je zu wehen
& darum im Geheimen wehte, im Gebet.

Aus dem amerikanischen Englisch von Steffen Popp und Uljana Wolf

aus: C. H.: Reisen in Ziegengeschwindigkeit. Gedichte. Englisch-Deutsch. Idstein: kookbooks 2008
© 2008 kookbooks, Idstein
Language: swedish

PÅ RYGG LÅTER ELKE GOLVET RESA SIG ÖVER HENNE

Att vara för sig själv i ett rum med videokamera
innebär att man inte är själv, men ensam.
Golvet slöt sig om mina läppar.
Jag pratade genom ett kvisthål. Alla kroppar
är flexibla, sammanflätas. En skog
som delats upp i horisontella stycken
& flyttats omkring: varsågod,
gå på mig. Jag har ett uppvridbart luftrör
som blivit vulkaniserat av den packning jag
hade med mig, det vill säga inget,
ingenting särskilt. Tar prover
för sprängämnen i min armhåla.
Jag lät aldrig hårlösheten klä mig.
Spader Dam har den djupaste graven.
I säkerhetsfållan där alla passagerare
blir röntgade – blå lever, rött hjärta,
vitt skelett – dansade jag omkring lite.
Jag fördes åt sidan. En stickprovskontroll.
Ja, det är av främlingar som jag fått
dessa kvarglömda händer, dessa
oövervakade ögon, dessa läppar
utan uttrycklig avsändare.
& de skygga skulle aldrig
kunna ta sina liv med pistol
eftersom ljudet vore nog för att
ta död på dem. Vi kan ha
en påfågel på podiet.
Vi kan oscillera mellan
ozeloterna, prick för prick.
Om du fäster en videokamera
på någons puckelrygg
ser man, i ett visst bilddjup, endast stjärnor
& självlysande grön sörja bortom stjärnorna
& en handfull ben
under sörjan, benen
i en högerhand
som greppar en flagga, den första kända
flaggan, elamiternas flagga från Elam,
deras språk förblir otydbart
& deras flagga var typiskt nog
alltför liten för att kunna vaja
& vajade därför bara blygsamt till hyllning.

Översättning: Kristian Carlsson
previous poem
   (Slow Waltz Through...)
1 / 10
next poem
(Hour)   
listen to all poems

Christian Hawkey

photo © private
* 14.09.1969, Pine Island, Florida, United States
lives in: Brooklyn, New York and Berlin , United States

Christian Hawkey was born in 1969 and grew up on Pine Island in Florida. He studied Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. There he co-founded the American literature journal Jubilat, which exists since 2000. Since 2004 Hawkey is also a professor for Literature and Creative Writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Hawkey’s first collection of poems, The Book of Funnels, was released in 2004; it was followed by Citizen of in 2008. His poetry has been published in various magazines and anthologies in Sweden, Slovenia, Austria, Germany and North America. He and his wife, the German poetess Uljana Wolf, work together in translating each other’s poems into their own mother tongue.

 photo © private
Christian Hawkey lives in Brooklyn, New York and Berlin, Germany.

Publications
  • The Book of Funnels

    Seattle: Wave Books, 2004

  • Citizen of

    Seattle: Wave Books, 2007

  • Ventrakl

    Brooklyn / New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010

  • SONNE FROM ORT

    Ausstreichungen/Erasures

    engl.-dt., nach den »Sonnets from the Portuguese« von Elizabeth Barrett Browning und den Übertragungen von Rainer Maria Rilke

    Berlin und Idstein: kookbooks, 2013

Prizes
  • 2006 Creative Capital Innovative Literature Award

  • 2006 Kate Tufts Discovery Award

Links
  • Christian Hawkey @ Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD

    Website (en)
  • Christian Hawkey @ Poetry International Web

    incl. video of him reading 'ELKE ALLOWING THE FLOOR TO RISE UP, OVER HER, FACE-UP'

    Website (en)
  • Christian Hawkey @ Wave Poetry

    Website (en)

Remember poem / Add to List

all public lists

Poem already on my list

If you want to remember or list a poem, become a community member.

Login/Register now
more poets from United States more poems in english Translations into english Christian Hawkey as a translator

Random poem

PUSH!

gedicht page complete: (1,224s)
  • About
  • Links
  • Blog
  • Newsletter
  • Produced by
  • privacy
lyrikline is created by Literaturwerkstatt Berlin in cooperation with its international network of lyrikline partners