A Role Model For Animals

Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize 2017

“For Michael Köhlmeier, writing poetry is an attempt to get to the heart of the world in a poetic way.”
Hansjörg Graf, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

The master storyteller Michael Köhlmeier can also write poetry that deals with thoughts and images, people and landscapes. “What is unspoken proves to be a challenge and the reader’s reveries are boundless,” writes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Köhlmeier is a poet of the everyday and the bigger picture, a poet of the great ballad and light song.

Again and again, he begins with a scene of a story:

I walked in summer
Through the warm woods,
In the winter over the field,
It was white like the sea.
I heard the shooting,
It sounded like my
old typewriter
sounded in earlier times.

On first glance, everything is turned into poetry. On second glance, Michael Köhlmeier’s poetry is an reflection of our own world.