Steffen Jacobs

Steffen Jacobs (pseudonym Jakob Stephan ), (born April 4, 1968 in Düsseldorf ), is a German poet , essayist , editor and translator .

Life

Steffen Jacobs has lived in Berlin since 1987. He studied German and theater studies at the Free University and worked in the 1990s as a reviewer and columnist a. a. for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Die Welt and the Neue Rundschau . Jacobs has been a freelance writer since 1996, specializing in poetry and poetry criticism. Since then he has published four volumes of poetry and two volumes of essays, as well as three anthologies of poetry. Since 2002 he has also been translating novels from English, including a. by Philip Larkin , Kingsley Amis and Kyril Bonfiglioli .

Steffen Jacobs is a member of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature and the PEN Center Germany .

Act

The literary critic Harald Hartung characterized Jacobs' poetry with the words: “He leads his readers (...) into the open air of experience, wit and cheerfulness. Into the adventure of ten or thirty verses, after reading which one sees one's environment a little differently: sharper, more ironic, but also more relaxed. "The writer Martin Mosebach judged in" The Literary World ":" Jacobs writes slim, elegant verses. Not only does he know no metaphors, he does not need any metaphors at all, which, according to general expectation, are regarded as symbols of the lyric. (...) His verses have no fat, no sugar. They are fluid and civilized. "

Under the pseudonym "Jakob Stephan", Steffen Jacobs worked in the role of a "poetry doctor" from 1996 to 2000 as a commentator on the contemporary German-language poetry business. On the occasion of the book edition “Lyrische Visite”, the literary scholar Gert Ueding spoke of a “novel of modern poetry that could not be more intelligent, entertaining, more knowledgeable”. As “Lyrik-TÜV” in 2007, Jacobs pursued a similar approach of ironic search for knowledge towards some central figures of German poetry of the twentieth century in a volume of essays of the same name.

Between 2004 and 2006, Steffen Jacobs went on several reading trips with Matthias Politycki and Hellmuth Opitz with the joint poetry program “Women. Well Difficult. ”The audience-effective performance of the three gentlemen in gray suits brought poetry to a hearing outside of literature-specific venues, for example in music clubs, theater foyers and on cabaret stages. The live program “Women. Well Difficult ”is documented on a CD of the same name.

Jacobs also writes features for radio stations, gives poetry seminars (e.g. for the German Literature Fund and the Federal Academy for Cultural Education Wolfenbüttel ) and translates novels from English. With “Die Komischen Deutschen” he published a popular anthology of poems that has been reissued many times since then (8th edition 2011). In the winter semester 2010/11, Steffen Jacobs held the poetics professorship at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz , in the summer semester 2013 and in the winter semester 2015/16 a visiting professor at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig . Shortly after its publication in spring 2010, his most recently published volume of poetry, "Die Liebe im September", reached number five on the best list of the magazine Literaturen .

Awards (selection)

• 1998: Berlin Art Prize, Literature Promotion Prize
• 2000: Project grant from the German Literature Fund
• 2001: Amsterdam Scholarship from the Cultural Exchange Foundation
• 2002: Hugo Ball Prize of the City of Pirmasens
• 2004: New York scholarship for the Kranichstein Literature Prize
• 2009: Project grant from the German Literature Fund
• 2011: Translator in Residence at the European College of Translators, Straelen

Works

• The adventurer's everyday life. Poems. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1996.
• Trained monad. Poems. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1997.
• Lyric visit or the next poem, please! Essays. Haffmans, Zurich 2000 (under the name Jakob Stephan).
• Offer friendly takeover. Poems. Haffmans at Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2002.
• The lyric TÜV. A century of German poetry is being examined. Essays. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2007 ( The Other Library ).
• Love in September. Poems. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010.

Poems in anthologies (selection)

• Harald Hartung (Ed.): Century Memory. German poetry in the 20th century. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1998.
• Karl Otto Conrady (ed.): The new Conrady. The great German poetry book. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf, Zurich 2000.
• Björn Kuhligk , Jan Wagner (Ed.): Poetry from now. 74 votes. With a foreword by Gerhard Falkner. DuMont, Cologne 2003.
• Robert Gernhardt , Klaus Caesar Zehrer (ed.): Hell and Schnell . 555 comical poems from 5 centuries. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2004.
• Wulf Segebrecht (Hrsg.): The German poem from the Middle Ages to the present. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
• Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.): The canon. German literature. Poems. Volume 7: Erich Fried to Durs Grünbein. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
• Heinrich Detering (ed.): Reclam's great book of German poems. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2007.
• Karl Otto Conrady (ed.): The great Conrady. The book of German poems. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2008.
• Hans-Joachim Simm (Ed.): German poems. Insel, Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig 2009.
• Michael Lentz , Michael Opitz (Eds.) In this country. Poems 1990–2010. S. Fischer, 2010.
• Gerd Haffmans (ed.): The celebrating Germans. 789 useful poems. Haffmans at Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2012.

Editing

• The strange Germans. 881 witty poems from 400 years. Haffmans bei Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2004. 8th edition 2011.
• The loving Germans. 645 inflamed poems from 400 years. Haffmans bei Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2006. 3rd edition 2012.
• Lousy! The lecherous lyrics of the Germans. Eichborn, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-8218-5815-9 .

Audio books

• Offer friendly takeover. Haffmans at Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2002.
• with Katharina Thalbach , Harry Rowohlt , Gerd Haffmans: Die Komischen Deutschen. Script, direction & narrator. Haffmans at two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
• with Matthias Politycki , Hellmuth Opitz : Women. Well Difficult. Lyrics live. Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg 2005.

Translations

• Kyril Bonfiglioli : The Big Mustache Secret. Novel. Haffmans at Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2003.
• Philip Larkin : Whirlwind at Willow Gables boarding school. Novel. Haffmans at Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2003.
• Neil Jordan : Shadows. Novel. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2005.
• Helen FitzGerald: Terribly nice. Novel. Galiani, Berlin 2010.
• Kingsley Amis : Jim in luck. Novel. Haffmans at Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2010.
• Philip Larkin : Jill. Novel. Haffmans at Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2010.
• with Bernhard Josef, Michael Kellner, Heike Rosbach u. a .: Suelette Dreyfus , Julian Assange : Underground. Factual novel. Haffmans & Tolkemitt, Berlin 2011.
• Helen FitzGerald: Last Confession. Novel. Galiani, Berlin 2011.
• Salvatore Scibona: The end. Novel. Arche, Zurich, Hamburg 2012.
• Helen FitzGerald: Thank death. Galiani, Berlin 2012.
• with Harry Rowohlt, Juli Zeh , Alexa Hennig von Lange u. a .: James Frey : The Last Testament of the Holy Scriptures. Novel. Haffmans & Tolkemitt, Berlin 2012.
• Helen FitzGerald: The Dark Staircase. Novel. Galiani, Berlin 2013.
• with Anna-Nina Kroll, Nicolai von Schweder-Schreiner a. a .: Richard Burton : The Diaries . (Ed .: Chris Williams ) Haffmans & Tolkemitt, Berlin 2013.
• Dennis Lehane : The Drop - Cash. Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 2014
• Rob Biddulph: Blown away. Children's book. Diogenes, Zurich 2015.
• Helen FitzGerald: Ex. Roman. Galiani, Berlin 2015.
• IJ Kay: North of the Moon Mountains. Novel. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2015.
• Dennis Lehane : At the end of a world. Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 2015.
• Dennis Lehane : Shutter Island . Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 2015.
• with Anja Kootz: Russ Kick (Ed.): The Graphic Canon Volume 2, world literature as a graphic novel . Galiani Berlin, Berlin 2015.
• Dennis Lehane : One last drink. Diogenes, Zurich 2016.
• Rob Biddulph: GRRRRR! Children's book. Diogenes, Zurich 2016.

Web links

• Literature by and about Steffen Jacobs in the catalog of the German National Library
• Steffen Jacobs at Lüneburg Literature Office

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Member entry by Steffen Jacobs at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz , accessed on October 11, 2017