Marion Poschmann receives Hölty Prize 2020

Poet, novelist and essayist Marion Poschmann is awarded the Hölty Prize 2020, with a prize money of 20.000 Euros the most highly remunerated prize for poetry in the German-speaking area, for her extensive poetic œuvre.

From the jury’s rationale:
»Since her debut Verschlossene Kammern (2002), Marion Poschmann‘s poetic work derives its subjects and motifs from the aesthetic examination of philosophy and the mythology of nature, but also from the encounter with visual impulses and fine arts. In her volumes of poetry Grund zu Schafen (2004) and Geistersehen (2010) Poschmann began to develop a new type of nature poem that put the aesthetic experience of landscapes on new foundations. In her new, masterful volume Nimbus (2020), Poschmann has refined her poetry even further – with poems about the global ravaging of nature, about shimmering colour effects, imaginary journeys to Siberia and ›urban shamans‹. In nine cyclically structured chapters, which work with free verse and traditional forms, the poets finds an incredibly powerful imagery for natural-historical primal scenes. At the centre we find a wreath of sonnets about ›The Great Nordic Expedition‹ that is based on the adventurous journey of the Siberia-researcher Johann Georg Gmelin. Nimbus presents poems that talk about mankind‘s irreversible destructive interference with nature while at the same time helping the not-yet disappeared magic of individual natural phenomena to sensuous presence. The ›black cloud‹ invoked in the eponymous poem is not only a meteorological sign but also refers to the spiritual meaning of ›nimbus‹ as aura or gloriole. Marion Poschmann’s fabulous volume of poetry contains delicately constructed texts, carried by the experience of nature and art, that present the world in a way that makes it seem like we are seeing it for the first time.«

Marion Poschmann, born in 1969 in Essen, studied German studies, philosophy and Slavic studies and currently lives in Berlin. She has been recognized for her poetry and prose many times, having been awarded the 2011 Peter Huchel Prize and the 2011 Ernst Meister Prize for poetry as well as the Literary Prize of the City of Düsseldorf (2017), the German Prize for Nature Writing (2017) and the Literary Prize of the City of Berlin (2018). Her volume of poetry Borrowed Sceneries was nominated for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2016. Her novel The Pine Islands was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2017 and for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019.

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