Anja Utler / Lene Albrecht / Lin Hierse - 38th Freiburg Literature Talk: Three readings with discussion

Anja Utler: It begins
Moderation: Thomas Geiger

"It begins" - this is how each of the 209 short poems in Anja Utler's poetry collection of the same name begins (Edition Korrespondenzen, 2023). Again and again, the refrain of mourning begins at dawn, showing how what has happened continues to have an effect, inscribing itself into all new beginnings. In slow steps, the cycle approaches the trigger of grief: Russia's attack on Ukraine. "The day begins / on all sides. Wall and / light. Behind it / the cosmos flies apart".

Utler's "groping concentrations of language" combine to form a "litany of the greatest intensity", is how the jury of the Peter Huchel Prize 2024 praised this intellectually brilliant and poetically circumspect search for a space beyond speechlessness, arbitrariness and rage. In their sequence, the quatrains reminiscent of haiku constantly reveal new connections, vary the tempo, shift meanings and, through the power of repetition, develop an evocative effect that becomes particularly impressive when Anja Utler reads her poems. She contrasts her poetic resonance with suffering and the will to destroy with an analytical essay, a plea for shockability, in which she finds a key to resistance.

Lene Albrecht: Weiße Flecken
Moderation: Katharina Knüppel

Ellen travels to Togo with a recording device and the task of researching the causes of flight and migration. Once there, she meets a seamstress who has avoided deportation from Germany, a young man who struggles with his work in an orphanage and a librarian who draws her attention to the Europeans who populate the country like ghosts.

Little by little, Ellen realizes that her own biography is also interwoven in the tight web of African-German history: Why did an uncle go to Nigeria and become wealthy there? Why did her great-great-grandfather bring only one of his three children from Panama to Germany around 1900? All we have of her great-grandmother Benedetta are blurry photos and scattered scraps of memory, rumors and speculation. In her search for her story, Ellen encounters her own insecurity, her own responsibility. With "Weiße Flecken" (S. Fischer, 2024), Lene Albrecht succeeds in writing a cleverly composed novel, a literary investigation of the highest topicality.

Lin Hierse: Das Verschwinden der Welt
Moderation: Annette Pehnt

The big house by the river promises Marta a new beginning. She falls in love with the old building, which has witnessed countless lives, dreams and losses. Only a few people are still here: apart from Marta, only Mr. Yi, the poet and Lu. When Marta learns shortly after moving in that the house is to be demolished, she wants to fight, but finds no allies in the others. So she fights alone against the disappearance of stories, memories and an entire world.

Lin Hierse studied Asian Studies and Human Geography and works as an editor for the taz newspaper, where her column "Poetical Correctness" appeared. Following her highly acclaimed debut "Wovon wir träumen", her new novel "Das Verschwinden der Welt" (Piper, 2024) tells of origins and identity, formative relationships and the question of what remains of a person after they have disappeared with a floating lightness.
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Photos: from left to right © Aleksandra Pawloff, Jacintha Nolte, Amelie Kahn-Ackermann

Sponsors: Cultural Office of the City of Freiburg, Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg, Sparkasse Freiburg-Nördlicher Breisgau, Guzzoni-Federer-Stiftung, kindly supported by jos fritz bookshop and Park Hotel Post

Cooperation partner: Konfuzius-Institut

Date: 9.11.2024, 10 am - 1 pm
Location: Literaturhaus Freiburg, Bertoldstraße 17
Admission: 11/7 euros

Literature talk
Literaturhaus