Barbara Koehler

Barbara Köhler (born April 11, 1959 in Burgstädt ; † January 8, 2021 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ) was a German poet , essayist and translator .

Life

Barbara Köhler grew up in Penig, Saxony , and attended the advanced secondary school in Plauen , where she also passed her Abitur. Then she trained as a skilled worker for textile fabric production, but then worked in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now again in Chemnitz) as a geriatric nurse and lighting technician and in other functions at the local theater . Between 1985 and 1988 Barbara Köhler completed a literature course at the literature institute "Johannes R. Becher" in Leipzig. At that time she lived in the Karl-Marx-Städter district of Kaßberg . Köhler's first works appeared in magazines; For two years she was scientifically active at the District Literature Center in Karl-Marx-Stadt.

Since the reunification Köhler worked as a freelance author. In 1991 she published her first volume of poetry, German Roulette , wrote for various newspapers and wrote essays and catalog articles on the visual arts . From 1994 Köhler lived in Duisburg .

In 2009 she carried out a writing workshop for students as poet in residence at the University of Duisburg-Essen . In 2012 she held the Thomas Kling Poetics Lecturer at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn .

Barbara Köhler died in early 2021 after a long illness at the age of 61.

Positions

The formally different poems by Köhler reveal the ego in the linguistic space as the overriding theme. Since 1996 the author has also created text installations, for example the words for windows 2 exhibition in the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament in November 1997 .

In Köhler's literary approach, the request Make differences on your SPRACHSPIEL poster could be read as a motto. A central concern of her work is to make female perspectives - and their disappearance - visible in thinking and grammar. In her volume of poetry, Niemands Frau (2007), there is talk of gaps in which women disappeared . This volume rewrites the ancient Greek odyssey and also questions the traditional attitudes of the female figures. Köhler, according to Mirjam Bitter, it was always about the body and not just about language games: Texture as tissue fibers and structure is associated with the body tissue of the skin in "NACHTSTÜCK: ARRHYTHMIE".

In the laudation of the Peter Huchel Prize she was attested that she was creating a “sophisticated network of linguistic images and imagery” that “naturally also captures the impact of the political in everyday life”.

Publications

German Roulette (1991)

Poetry

• German roulette. Poems 1984–1989. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991.
• Blue box. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995.
• In front of the sea. 1995.
• 36 views of the Gorwetsch mountain. Dörlemann, Zurich 2013.
• Istanbul, noticeably. Poems, photographs ( series of publications by the Kunststiftung NRW, vol. 6). Lilienfeld Verlag, Düsseldorf 2015, ISBN 978-3-940357-48-9 .

prose

• Retrospective. (1991)
• Wittgenstein's niece. Mixed fonts, mixed media. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999.
• With Osmar Osten: Hungarian water. (2000)
• Rondeau Allemagne i inne wiersze. (2005)
• No man's wife. Songs to the Odyssey. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007.
• Duisburg for beginners. literurport.de 2010
• Newfoundland. Fonts, partly determined. Edition Korrespondenzen, Vienna 2012.
• 42 Views on Waiting for the River , Edition Korrespondenzen, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-902951-28-1 . (44 nine-liners, created in the summer of 2016 in Castrop-Rauxel on the habitable sculpture Waiting for the River [named Emscher] by the Rotterdam artist group Observatorium )

Critical works:

• A public text. Debate about the Gomringer poem .

Translations

• Gertrude Stein : time to eat. a table company. objects, food and portraits by Gertrude Stein. (Audio CD, 2001)
• Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons. Delicate buttons. (2004)
• Samuel Beckett : Trumpet Tones / Mirlitonnades. Poems. (2005)

Awards

After the 2017 award, this poem was placed on the facade of the Alice Salomon University

• 1990: Literature Prize from the Jürgen Ponto Foundation
• 1994: Else Lasker Schüler Dramatist Prize
• 1995: City clerk for Rheinsberg
• 1996: Clemens Brentano Prize
• 1997: Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
• 1997: “writer in residence” at the University of Warwick
• 1999: Ruhr Literature Prize
• 2001: Promotion Prize for the Lessing Prize of the Free State of Saxony
• 2003: Samuel Bogumil Linde Prize
• 2006: Scholarship holder at the Künstlerhaus Edenkoben
• 2007: Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize
• 2008: Joachim Ringelnatz Prize
• 2009: Poetry Prize of the German Business Culture Group
• 2009: Erlangen Prize for Literature for Poetry as Translation , with Ulf Stolterfoht
• 2016: Peter Huchel Prize
• 2017: Alice Salomon Poetics Prize
• 2018: Ernst Meister Prize for Poetry

literature

• Georgina Paul, Helmut Schmitz (eds.): Approach - dialogues with Barbara Köhler . Rodopi, Amsterdam and Atlanta 2000. ISBN 90-420-1382-6 ( table of contents pdf )
• Mirjam Bitter: language, power, gender. Poetry and essays by Barbara Köhler . Trafo Verlag, Berlin 2007. ISBN 978-3-89626-412-1
• Anneka Metzger: Speaking up. The performative text installations by the poet Barbara Köhler. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2011. ISBN 978-3-89528-834-0 ( table of contents pdf )
• An Odyssey for our time. Barbara Köhler's Niemands Frau , ed. By Georgina Paul. Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2013. ISBN 978-90-420-3765-6 ( table of contents pdf )
• Johann Reisser: Archeology and Sampling - The Reorganization of Poetry by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Thomas Kling and Barbara Köhler . Kadmos, Berlin 2014. ISBN 978-3-86599-222-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Barbara Köhler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and information on the work of Barbara Köhler at Literaturport
• Barbara Koehler. In: galerie-m.com . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Kunststiftung NRW, Edition Korrespondenzen, Galerie m, Lilienfeld Verlag, Museum DKM: Barbarba Köhler is dead: “Peace-loving in the spirit”. In: boersenblatt.net. January 11, 2021, accessed January 11, 2021 . Barbara Köhler: biography. In: galerie-m.com. Retrieved January 12, 2021 . 
    
2. ↑ Johann Reisser: cube, box, box - conversation with Barbara Köhler. April 25, 2019, accessed January 12, 2021 . 
3. ↑ Poetics lecturer: Barbara Köhler teaches at the University of Bonn. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 3, 2012, p. 28.
4. ↑ Annett Gröschner on the death of the poet Barbara Köhler: About the production of text surfaces. Deutschlandfunk Kultur, January 11, 2021, accessed on January 12, 2021 . 
5. ↑ Angela Gutzeit in conversation with Michael Braun: On the death of the poet Barbara Köhler. In: book market . Deutschlandfunk Kultur, January 11, 2021, accessed on January 12, 2021 . 
6. ↑ Mirjam Bitter: Transpositions of Text, Textile and Texture. Barbara Köhler's and Rosi Braidotti's drafts of flexible, but not unstable subjectivities. In: An Odyssey for our time. Barbara Köhler's No Man's Wife. Edited by Georgina Paul. Rodopi, Amsterdam 2013, pp. 117–138, p. 121. (Bitter reads Köhler's poetry Niemands Frau parallel to Braidotti's philosophical text Transpositions. On Nomadic Ethics , Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006, repr. 2012, ISBN 978-0-7456 -3595-8 . Table of Contents )
7. ↑ Barbara Köhler (2016) | Peter Huchel Prize for German-language poetry. Retrieved August 8, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Henning Heske: Frankfurter Anthologie: Barbara Köhler: "Endstelle" . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . July 17, 2017, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed January 12, 2021]).
9. ↑ Review: Carola Wiemers: Words combine to form rubble. deutschlandradiokultur .de, April 26, 2013
10. ^ Duisburg for beginners , presentation on literaturport.de , 2010.
11. ↑ A public text. Debate about the Gomringer poem. In: FAZ from September 5, 2017.