Looking out LR’s backdoor: 06/24

For June, we once again hosted wonderful authors who wrote about language, identity and shame. And since sport is always part of culture and often resembles a writing process, we invited authors to write about football in the month when the EURO 2024 and the Copa América 2024 kicked off at almost the same time.

And poetry has also found its place again - we are particularly pleased that our columnist Alexandru Bulucz won the prestigious Hölty Prize for Poetry from the state capital and Sparkasse Hannover in June.

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1) Lisa Nova Berwadushime continues our series of articles on "shame". She recalls how her first feelings of shame were implanted in her as a little girl and what function this unpleasant feeling can have in educating and controlling people. The editor, translator and writer lives in Rwanda.

2) For his poetry column "Galant Lies", Alexandru Bulucz translated a poem by Moni Stănilă. It deals with the coronavirus pandemic and the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Romanian Moni Stănilă is a prize-winning poet, children’s book and novel author who lives in Chișinău, Moldova. Alexandru Bulucz, also a prize-winning poet, critic, translator and editor, lives in Berlin, Germany.

3) In "Bei Scheitern nicht verzagen: Wetter und Schiedsrichter an den Kragen!", Moni Stănilă writes about the parallels between referees and literary critics, as well as the differences between football and literature. The essay is the start of our series of articles on football.

4) Zsuzsanna Gahse reflects on the perspective of the first-person narrator. She describes her own experiences as a writer and reader and names classics of world literature, which she discusses as if they were still alive. The award-winning author was born in Hungary and now lives in Müllheim, Switzerland.

5) Axel Timo Purr reviews Tlotlo Tsamaase’s "Womb City". The beginning of this dystopia is reminiscent of cyberpunk classics. As it progresses, it turns out to be a highly topical, original masterpiece that furiously surpasses all comparisons and expectations. The award-winning writer Tlotlo Tsamaase lives and works in Botswana. The journalist and initiator of Literatur.Review (Opens in a new window), Axel Timo Purr, lives in Munich, Germany.

6) The question of whether art and sport are of equal value has certainly been a hot topic ever since art and sport have existed. Mario Bernet’s essay "How to get to theory" provides some surprising answers from philosophers and footballers alike. The essay is the second part of our series of articles on football.

Primary school teacher, columnist, author and lecturer Mario Bernet lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

7) "homo sapiens. Report of a shipwrecked man" consists of 9 individual volumes in the text genres of poetry, essay, short story and novel. The dystopian cycle of works spans a period from the end of the 1960s to the replacement of the Gregorian calendar by a new calendar in the distant future.

Under the motto "Poetry Piano Painting", Stefan Grosser reads poems from his work and Michaela Halt plays jazz on the piano in the studio of the painter Judith Bokodi.

The podcast is an audio recording of the event from June 8, 2024 and is only available in German