Project: Transit of Venus

Transit of Venus – Poetry Exchange

Language: english

Translations: german (Venustransit – Verstransit)

Transit of Venus – Poetry Exchange

A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against the solar disk.

During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun.

The Transit of Venus has fascinated the contemporaries since its discovery in 1639 and plays an important role in the history of New Zealand and in the cult of the Maori people.

The Transit of Venus on the 6th June 2012 was the inspiration for an international, multilayered poetry project. New Zealand's appearance as the Guest of Honour 2012 at the Frankfurt Book Fair was a good opportunity to realise it.

In June 2012 the German poets Uwe Kolbe, Brigitte Oleschinski and Ulrike Almut Sandig visited New Zealand to experience the Transit of Venus together with the New Zealand poets Hinemoana Baker, Glenn Colquhoun and Chris Price, and to try to condense it into poetry.

In October 2012 the New Zealand poets travelled to Germany to meet the German colleagues in a translation workshop “VERSchmuggel / reVERSible" at the Berliner Literaturwerkstatt and to translate each others ‘Transit of Venus’ poems. After a presentation in Berlin and Hamburg the project, the poets and the translations were finally presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Here lyrikline.org presents three ‘Transit of Venus’ poems of each participant as well as the translation into the other language.

This Project was organised by the Goethe-Institut New Zealand, the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University in Wellington, the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, New Zealand’s Ministry of Culture and New Zealand’s Publishers Association, and was supported by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Another Transit of Venus will be not seen again until 2117.

Translations:

Language: german

Venustransit – Verstransit

Bei einem Venustransit stehen Sonne, Venus und Erde exakt in einer Linie. Diese seltene planetare Konstellation tritt in etwa 243 Jahren nur viermal auf. Die Venus wandert bei dieser Erscheinung scheinbar als winziges tiefschwarzes Scheibchen im Verlauf von mehreren Stunden westwärts über die Sonne.

Der Venustransit hat seit seiner Entdeckung im Jahre 1639 immer wieder eine starke Faszination auf die Zeitgenossen ausgeübt. Für die Māori in Neuseeland hat das Naturereignis zudem kultische Bedeutung.

Der letzte Venustransit am 6. Juni 2012 war die Inspiration zu einem internationalen, vielschichtigen Lyrikprojekt, der Ehrengastauftritt Neuseelands auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2012 eröffnete die Möglichkeit für dessen Umsetzung.

Im Juni reisten die deutschen Lyriker Uwe Kolbe, Brigitte Oleschinski und Ulrike Almut Sandig nach Neuseeland, um den Venustransit dort gemeinsam mit den neuseeländischen Dichtern Hinemoana Baker, Glenn Colquhoun und Chris Price zu erleben und sich von dem Erlebnis zu Gedichten inspirieren zu lassen.

Im Oktober wiederum kamen die neuseeländischen Dichter nach Deutschland, um zusammen mit den deutschen Dichterkollegen an einem VERSschmuggel-Workshop der Berliner Literaturwerkstatt teilzunehmen und die Gedichte der Kollegen in die eigene Sprache zu übersetzen. Das Projekt, die Autoren und die Übersetzungsergebnisse wurden dann in Berlin und in Hamburg der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt und im Anschluss auf der Buchmesse in Frankfurt präsentiert.

lyrikline.org präsentiert von jedem der Teilnehmer drei Gedichte sowie die Übersetzungen in die jeweils andere Sprache.

Das Projekt wurde vom Goethe-Institut Neuseeland, dem International Institute of Modern Letters der Victoria University in Wellington, der Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, dem neuseeländischen Kulturministerium und der NZ Publishers Association organisiert und durch das Deutsche Auswärtige Amt unterstützt.

Der nächste Venustransit wird erst wieder im Jahr 2117 zu beobachten sein.

Project: Transit of Venus

* , Wellington, New Zealand
lives in: Wellington, New Zealand

Hinemoana Baker is a poet, musician and playwright. Her writing has featured in anthologies and literary journals, and her first collection of poetry, mātuhi / needle, was published in 2004. Baker studied Māori as an adult and her love for Te Reo comes through in her poetry. The poems unite observations and experiences of childhood, family, emerging sexuality, politics and culture. Hinemoana Baker was appointed 2009 Arts Queensland Poet in Residence, and she performs regularly as both a poet and a singer-songwriter. Her second book kōiwi kōiwi / bone bone was published in 2010.

Glenn Colquhoun is a doctor, poet and children's writer. His first poetry collection, The Art of Walking Upright, won Best First Book of Poetry at the 2000 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2003 he won the Poetry Category and also became the first poet to be awarded the coveted Montana Readers' Choice Award. He has written several children’s books and has been the convener of the New Zealand Post Book Awards. In 2004, Colquhoun was the recipient of the Prize in Modern Letters.

The poet and writer Uwe Kolbe was born in East Berlin in 1957. After leaving school he met the German author Franz Führmann who was to become his mentor, and it was through Führmann that Kolbe had the opportunity to publish a number of poems. His first book, Hineingeboren (Born into), was published in Weimar. Kolbe’s work was highly controversial and publication of his works was banned in the GDR. As a result of this, Kolbe worked increasingly as a translator of among others, the Spanish author, García Lorcas. As co-editor of the magazine Mikado he was able to circumvent his publication ban and continue to publish his own works. In 1985 Kolbe travelled in Western Europe and was a visiting lecturer at universities in Austin, Texas and Vienna. He moved to Hamburg in 1987 and received many prizes and awards, most recently, the Heinrich Mann Prize from the Academy of the Arts in Berlin in 2012. Between 1997 and 2002 he was head of the studio of literature and theatre at the University of Tübingen. Since then he has returned to live in.

Brigitte Oleschinski was born in Köln in 1955. She studied Political Science at the Free University in Berlin and worked as a contemporary historian on issues concerning political repression in totalitarian systems. She has worked as a guest lecturer and translator, participated in poetry performances and collaborated on the internet project www.neuedichte.de. Oleschinski has published a poetry collection including Mental Heat Control and Your Passport is Not Guilty and was awarded the Peter Huchel Prize in 1998, the Ernst Meister Prize in 2001 and in 2004 the Erich Fried Prize. From 2003 and 2005, together with Indonesian artists, she performed the poetry performance “Laut Lesung” (According to Reading) in Germany, Indonesia and Mexico. Her poetry collection Geisterströmung was published in 2004. She currently lives in Berlin as a freelance writer.

Chris Price is a poet, editor and educator. Her collections of poetry include Husk (2002) and The Blind Singer (2009). She has also published an eccentric biographical dictionary that samples the lives of both real and fictional characters called Brief Lives (2006). Price has won and been shortlisted for several nationally recognized literary awards, and in 2008 she was the Auckland University Writer in Residence at the Michael King Writers’ Centre. Recently she has been awarded the prestigious New Zealand Post Mansfield Writer in Residence scholarship in Menton, France. Chris teaches creative writing full time at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington.

Ulrike Almut Sandig was born in 1979 in Großenhain and grew up near Dresden. Together with Marlen Pelny, she set up the literature project “augenpost”. After beginning a degree in journalism, she graduated with a master’s degree in Religious Studies and modern Indian Studies and made extended language study trips to India. Her first poetry collection Zunder was published in 2005, followed by streumen in 2007, for which Sandig was supported with a residency in Sydney. In 2006 Sandig was awarded the Meran Poetry Prize. Sandig has published poems, prose and radio stories and between 2007 and 2009 she was the editor of the literary magazine EDIT. The Südwestrundfunk radio station broadcast her first radio play Hush little Baby in 2008, directed by Robert Schoen. Her second radio play Unter Wasser, was broadcast in April 2010 and directed by Judith Lorentz. In 2009 Sandig was awarded the Leonce and Lena Prize. For her collection of stories Flamingos, which was published in 2010, Sandig was awarded a scholarship to spend time at the Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin.

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