The Stanzas Poetry Series

The Stanzas Poetry Series brings poetry to the English Theatre Berlin with a diverse range of poets writing in English from Berlin and beyond.  Each month, Stanzas will feature two poets who will share their work, followed by a discussion and question & answer  session with the audience. 

The series is hosted by American poet and Berlin resident Michael Haeflinger . 

John Hartley Williams grew up in London and has lived and worked in France, Jugoslavija and Francophone Africa. Since 1976 he has lived in Berlin, where he taught at the Free University. He has published eleven collections of poetry, two of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. A new book Café des Artistes was published by Cape in April and last month a pamphlet Outpost Theater, a collection of Berlin poems from before and after die Wende. Williams’ work has appeared in numerous anthologies. Translations from the Serbo-Croatian appeared in The Scar on the Stone (1998). Also, together with Hilde Ottschofski, translations from the Rumanian of Marin Sorescu: Censored Poems (2001).

HERE is John´s official homepage.

Catherine Hales grew up in Surrey and lived in Norwich, Bonn and Stuttgart before coming to Berlin, where she now works as a freelance translator. She once played bass in a new wave band; her jobs have included a disastrous flirt with teaching and being a nursery gardener and a bus conductor. She was co-poetry editor of Bordercrossing Berlin magazine and is part of the team organising the annual English-language Poetry Hearings festival in Berlin. Her poetry and translations of contemporary German poetry have appeared in print and online magazines in the UK, US and Europe. Her pamphlet out of mind came out in 2006, and her first full poetry collection, hazard of fall is being published by Shearsman Books in 2010 as well as berlin fresco, a selection of translations of Norbert Hummelt.

Here is a poem by Catherine Hales:

dereliction of

not exactly frivolous       she holds

such antics in abeyance       the body's

convoluted autonomy      concave as

except as otherwise       spontaneous

a stance       a shell of artifice

to shield this fragile skin

panic setting in with the in

tensity of doorways       intricate

retaliations flirt among

these tectonic shifts       these

multiple channels       a sign to whom

& whereas the parties       keeping it

under wraps       down on the street

the word is out       she spits on her image