PASSAGES

The language of politics is always looking to suggest consensuses and allege majorities, always looking to isolate opposing opinions and those who think and speak differently, poet Barbara Köhler once said in an interview. Born and raised in East Germany, ever since she was a young writer she had been interested in using language to pick apart power relations, to denounce the accepted status quo, and to dismantle meaning. As she wrote in one of her poems: »…we don’t speak our minds: we squawk what’s been shoved down our throats.« It was against these forces that she wrote, devising her poetics of interrogating and expanding language. In this way, over the course of several decades, Köhler produced a poetic oeuvre that is unmatched in its diversity and intensity.

The volume PASSAGES gathers together poetic texts from Barbara Köhler’s major works and her lesser-known publications (collections such as Deutsches Roulette [German Roulette, 1991], Niemands Frau [No-Man’s Wife, 2007], and 42 Ansichten zu Warten auf den Fluss [42 Views for Waiting by the River, 2017]), as well as texts dating back to 1985 in the GDR periodical Anschlag, following her oeuvre all the way through to her final pieces in the journal die horen published in 2020. This volume also includes writing installations that document the multimedia character of her work, and it is rounded off by previously unpublished material from her literary remains.

»The subversive potential of difference: … [Barbara Köhler’s] work shows that there are no simple truths, that reality never consists of a single perspective. It is a consolation that with Passages, a wonderfully edited and representative selection of her oeuvre is now available.« Mareike Ilsemann, WDR 5

»There is extraordinary work here, deserving significant praise.« Herbert Wiesner, WELT AM SONNTAG