»Take Note! 3«

“Nothing is lost. It can make itself known, faintly, yet unmistakably, young,” writes Elke Erb in her poem “Arrived in Ahrenshoop.” We were invited by the collective “kaboom” to create a sound collage inspired by this text, which is now on display at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin! It is part of an immersive exhibition, with further artistic responses from authors Özlem Özgül Dündar and Ronya Othmann. Additionally, the sound collage can be conveniently listened to from home—in the digital VOOO Space (Villa of One’s Own) of the LCB, where many other exciting literary and artistic works can also be found.

Elke Erb’s poem explores memory and the possibilities of linguistic perception. Our poets had the opportunity to connect with their own memories of the text and engage with it in the form of poetic lines. The sound collage consists of these highly personal lines, along with voiced passages from Erb’s poem, and includes all the languages in which we organize workshops: Persian, Arabic, Ukrainian, Kurdish, and German.

The exhibition opening took place on October 10, 2024, as part of the conference “Enter the Ghosts: Forms of Survival in Poetry.” This event is part of the AfterWords research project at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School (Freie Universität Berlin), led by Einstein Visiting Fellow Prof. Karen Leeder (University of Oxford) and hosted by Prof. Jutta Müller-Tamm (Freie Universität Berlin). Following a shared dinner, there was a discussion about the affective potential of Erb’s poetry with our poet Maryam Sarshar, project leader Theresa Rüger, author Özlem Özgül Dündar, and the “kaboom” collective, moderated by author and translator Lea Schneider.

Our sincere thanks go to “kaboom” for the opportunity to be part of this beautiful project, and we congratulate our poets on their impressive creativity and wonderful texts!