Photo: Public final reading with a large audience at the Lettrétage Literature House in Kreuzberg.
Photo: Public final reading with a large audience at the Lettrétage Literature House in Kreuzberg.The well-attended final reading of this year's autumn holiday writing workshop at Lettrétage was diverse. Equally diverse were the opportunities for exchange, personal writing, and experimentation, for example with slam poetry and graphic recording, as well as through discussions with experts at "WARE Wort," the collaborative seminar of Kreatives Schreiben eV and wannseeFORUM from October 23-27, 2017. Bestselling author Bov Bjerg ("Auerhaus"), for instance, answered questions such as "What makes a bestseller?".
Participants also received inspiration through a conversation with literary agent Julia Dösch, a Skype interview with publisher Nikola Richter, and a visit to the Literary Colloquium Berlin, which included a discussion about opportunities in the field of literary scholarships/writing and a reading.
The diverse workshop units, covering a range of content and methods, included a workshop on graphic recording, one on slam poetry, and one on text visualization. Beyond the spoken word, participants were able to discover new approaches to the topic and their own creative processes through nonverbal techniques. The workshops for exploring the theme and experimenting with writing offered a variety of approaches, such as column writing, functional poetry, surrealism, writing from receipts, plotting like a bestselling author, and more. Daily critique sessions provided a forum for discussing participants' own texts.
The results received much applause at the public reading. However, due to the sheer number of texts, not all of them could be presented. Therefore, instead of a photo glimpse, here is a text as a snapshot of the day, October 25, 2017, by Sarah Augustin
"In front of the theater backdrop stands a man with very thin fingers. He paints verbal pictures in the air with gestures. In the mirrored windows of the background, streaks of his hands are visible as he performs his stories of noblemen like marionettes.
When he wanders around the stage at the end, the thin facade behind him wobbles. He dramatically adjusts his thick-rimmed oval glasses. Grinning, he disappears through the cardboard entrance gate.
There are no encores in this performance, and he is always alone on stage. No one has ever really looked where he disappears to. The backdrop is the facade of his house. The building is made of stone and old, rattling sash windows. In winter it is drafty, and in summer it is stifling. The whole house is crammed with costumes, books, and low furniture. The showman sits down at the counter of his Landhauskitchen and sips some herbal tea. Very slowly, his shoulders relax, and he becomes a private individual again."
The writing workshop “WARE WORT” was a collaboration between Kreatives Schreiben eV and Stiftung wannseeFORUM,
supported by the project »Klartext & Durchblick«, funded by the PwC Foundation.
and was funded by the Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family
