Christmas Carols! For this last post of our Literary Field Adventskalender we chose to share a very special concert: The British Parliamentary Choir and the choir of the Deutsche Bundestag gave a concert in Berlin on 12 December 2016. The first joint concert was held in July 2014 in Westminster […] Read more
Sandra van Lente reads “Lametta” by Frances Leviston Frances Leviston is a contemporary British poet, critic, and teacher of poetry and creative writing. Her first collection, Public Dream (Picador, 2007), was one of the most acclaimed debuts of recent years. It was shortlisted for a number of literary prizes, such […] Read more
Tanja Steinlechner reads “An den Prinzen Benjamin” by Else Lasker-Schüler Else Lasker-Schüler was a Jewish German poet and part of the Berlin Bohème at the beginning of the 20th century. She is often described as a flamboyant personality and part of the Avantgarde and Expressionist movement. Else Lasker-Schüler wrote several […] Read more
Gesa Stedman reads from “A Christmas Tree” by Charles Dickens Gesa Stedman, who teaches literature and culture at the Centre for British Studies in Berlin, reads the beginning of Charles Dickens’s story “A Christmas Tree”, first published in Dickens’s weekly magazine “Household Words” in 1850. The story describes a fairly […] Read more
Sandra van Lente reads “Es gibt so wunderweiße Nächte” by Rainer Maria Rilke And we are back to Rilke. He is one of my favourite poets – and actually one of the first I came across. Rilke was part of our literary canon at school (in Hessen in the 1980s); […] Read more
Jürgen Schlaeger and Sandra van Lente read “To a Snowflake” by Francis Thompson Open your eyes, look up to the sky and see… Well, what do you see? Certainly no sign of snow when you examine the grey December sky over Berlin. In order to remind us what snow feels […] Read more
Ursula Spindler reads “Betrifft: Erster Schnee” by Mascha Kaléko My grandaunt lived in this quirky house full of books and art. It was beautiful. Especially in the winter when in the evening, we would sit at the dining table, play scrabble and enjoy the Christmas lights while it was being […] Read more
Helen Oyeyemi reads “The Disgraced Fox”, a Korean fable Read more
Catherine Julie Smith reads “Into my heart an air that kills” by A.E Housman A.E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of 63 poems published in the latter years of the 19th century which, at first, sold slowly, but then became a popular read because of the Boer War […] Read more
Jonathan Davidson reads his poem “We Have no Record” Jonathon Davidson is a contemporary British writer who also works in literature development and promotion, in particular in the Midlands. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and has published poetry collections, poetry pamphlets and the e-book Selected Poems (Smith/Doorstop, […] Read more
