NFAQ

Can one lie when telling oneself one’s own story — must one, can one not lie?

I believe the “I” is always an autofictional narrative: a mixture of confession and invention. Maybe one could put it like this: we lie in order to deceive other people — and we autofictionalize in order to move closer to our own truth. Or perhaps it is non-fiction: based on all the facts we remember, and all the facts we unconsciously invent in order to be able to tell ourselves at all. One’s own truth will always be more than our factual biography. It is also what we want to be, and what we cannot be — or, in the worst case, are not allowed to be.

There is something in your texts that almost always sounds tactile — are these touches? What kind of materiality are you interested in?

I am interested in being-there: in presence, in experience. For example, what I like about photographs is the fact that they attest to something real: the person who took the photo was — or is — present. In that very moment. In that very place. In the same light. In the same weather. Perhaps something entirely different happened to them there; perhaps they documented what happened to someone else. But they were there. That may be where the materiality comes from. For me, being present, being there, ideally means being touched — and touching.

What role does beauty play in your poems?

Beauty is a really difficult term. Many people struggle with it — physically and psychologically. During my archaeology studies, I came across the ideal of kalokagathia, the excellence of a person expressed in what is physically and intellectually beautiful and good. I do not believe in such constructions.

I find bulky waste beautiful, graffiti, bridges over railway tracks. I also find Modigliani’s paintings beautiful. There is a photo of the ugliest dog in the world. I find him beautiful. My poems do not only admit what is supposedly beautiful, but also what is ugly and violent — which, for me, is always politically produced. It is not the neglected unhoused person passing through my poem who is ugly, but the conditions that leave him without shelter. It is not the trash in the streets of the neighborhood, but the question: Why is there less street cleaning here than in other districts? Only in language may my poems search for something that might be a kind of linguistic and compositional beauty. But that, too, is very vague — and certainly 100% subjective.

In “Ein Faden Sisal,” you seem (or the speaker seems) to be wrestling with a history — perhaps against a history. What is this history about, and what do you set against it? (In your work, it does not sound like: another history.)

In the poem Ein Faden Sisal, I am dealing with history: colonial history, capitalism, power structures, and the body within them. It is also about one’s own personal history — a narrative that is rooted in this history and can only take place within its framework. There is no new or alternative history in the poem. There is only the question of how to tell one’s own story differently, as a way of resisting being told by that history. So it is about claiming authorship as an act of empowerment.

In that act, thinking and reflection are essential: recognizing, feeling, experiencing. The aim is to disentangle one’s own story, to refuse imposed narratives, and to reclaim the body — to free it from stories written by others.

You have written a great deal in/about Neukölln. Why? In what role do you see yourself? Are you a chronicler? Are they love poems? The beginning of a new archive?

I was simply a resident there for fifteen years, without any particular role or agenda. I did not—and do not—have a specific intention for these poems. I called them Neukölln Variationen because I kept varying the same motifs, as if I were varying painterly motifs, or meditating through the repetition of the same images. Like the painters on Montmartre who return again and again to the same views of Paris.

I am not a chronicler. Even though I wrote there, and about it, for years, I only wrote poems about my neighborhood—not its history. Yes, they are love poems: to the houses, the streets, the shops, the light. And in that sense, they sometimes also hold on to history. Nameless neighbors, for example, appear, emerge and dissolve again, move away, or die.

Neukölln is constantly instrumentalized in the media — either to advance right-wing and nationalist narratives or to construct a counter-perspective. In these poems, I never talk about politics. I write about people, houses, and streets. About dogs and their owners in the neighborhood. About the canal. About Sonnenallee, delivery vans, or the city bus. At first, I do not experience these things as worthy of archiving, but as images that stand entirely on their own. And then, in a second moment, they may become something else — an image of something entirely different. Perhaps like a Dutch floral still life, in which every flower has its meaning and function. But I do not want to over-interpret that here.

Who do you speak to? When you say “you” in a poem, or “we.” In general.

I speak to myself, because when I write, no one else is there. I am a bit like an old, eccentric neighbor muttering to himself. If you listen more closely, it is not all that incoherent — it is actually interesting in its own way. When I say “we,” I mean us :) even if we do not know each other. Not yet. We meet in the poem. And there, we meet one another on equal terms. To be honest, I also often say “we” in order to feel less alone. I simply assume that I am not alone.