Michael LentzBorn on 15 May, 1964 in Düren | Author, sound poet, scholar of literature, and musician | Studies of German language, history, and philosophy in Aachen, Munich and Siegen | 1999 completion of doctorate with a two-volume dissertation on sound poetry/music after 1945. A critical-documentary analysis | 1985 1st lyric and prose volume “Zur Kenntnisnahme” (For your information), his debut work on the occasion of a public reading in the Leopold Hoesch Museum in Düren | 2001 winner of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2001 | 2005 winner of the Literaturhäuser Prize| Since 2004 President of the Free Academy of the Arts of Leipzig | Since May 2006 professor of literary writing at the University of Leipzig (German Literature Institute of Leipzig) | 2007 novel “Pazifik Exil” (Pacific Exile) on the “Longlist” of the 2007 German Book Prize
Prizes and distinctions:
1998 1st Prize of the Individual Competition National Poetry Slam | 1999 Literature scholarship of the Berlin Senates (LCB) | 1999 Literature grant of the Free State of Bavaria | 2000 scholarship for a stay at Casa Baldi in Olevano near Rome | 2001 visiting scholarship for Villa Aurora (Pacific Palisades, California) | 2001 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize | 2002 Hans-Erich-Nossack grant of the BDI (Federation of German Industries) | 2003 lectureship for poetry at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz | 2005 Literaturhäuser Prize | 2006 Liliencron lectureship in Kiel | 2008 lectureship for poetry in Wiesbaden
“As if it were a piece of me.” Autobiographical writing
“Literature is always autobiographical – or it is not literature”, claimed Alfred Andersch. And in his poem “verse um an frühere zu erinnern” (verses to remember previous verses) Wolfgang Hilbig writes “I always speak in my language with someone named ‘I’. It is as if the writer constantly has to assure himself/herself of a him or herself that is never here and now there: a “self” as a process; a medial “self” of the writer, in correspondence with an extrinsic, prescribed “life-self” which can never captured in the text? A “he” or “she” can be a disguised “I”.
A text that says “I” can do this so unmistakeably and so indispensably that any potential inferences to the author must be questioned time and time again. What transformation(s) does an “I” experience in an autobiographical text? What necessity does the text signal to say “I”? Is an autobiographical text always bound to concrete life situations, which find their way into the text? What strategies does an autobiographical text reveal? And finally: does an autobiographical text always have to deal with a “self”? This and other questions will be dealt with on the basis of texts from the participants (prose, poems, drama / radio drama).
Participation requirements and application documents:
Please submit: autobiographical prose up to 10 pages in length or up to 8 autobiographical poems. Radio dramas (on CD) or radio drama manuscripts (extracts up to 10 pages). The texts do not have to be finalized. Max. number of participants: 12
Michael Lentz, from: “Liebeserklärung” (Declaration of Love). Novel. © S. Fischer Verlag. Frankfurt a.M. 2003
"Telephone terror, you say. The previously pleasant conversation, the so-called eagerly awaited conversation has become an ugly antic. Trust eaten away by suspicion. Short messages and telephone terror. You are scantily tender; you are a yapping predator. You call, you don’t call.
You don’t call when you say you will call. You just call much later. If you call much later, my nerves are already on edge. You don’t call, you don’t answer. I go through the roof, as they say, I can’t stand it and call you again and leave a short message for you. No reaction and then I go nuts, as people like to say. I call you and create the impression that I am just calling you for the heck of it, even though I am already in disarray and have completely lost my patience. You felt controlled, you respond. Oh man, that’s enough. I scream at you, but can secretly understand you secretly: This culture of discussion is horrendous – it fuels mistrust and gives you an empty stomach. You in Berlin, for example. You don’t answer my message that I will be home at 11pm and whether you can give me a number where you can be reached. I call you at 10:59 pm – by cell phone. I couldn’t be more exact. You give me a number. I call again. “Why didn’t you respond to the short message?”
“I just arrived here, at a friends’ house. We are talking. I would have called you at 11pm.” “Why didn’t you quickly tell me that you called me at 11pm?” “Because I would have called you at 11pm. I had asked you for a number where I could reach you”. “I had to get here first”. “And you could even just give me the number that I asked you for in my text message at 9pm? “I would have called you at 11pm.” I told you I would be home at 11pm”, “and at 11pm I would have called you”. And then she asked whether I am totally drunk. I was totally drunk. "
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