All guests of the European Literature Days from 2009 to 2014.

[ Recommandation de Beat Mazenauer ] Matthias Politycki is a poet who writes in the knowledge that he belongs to a long tradition: Goethe, Heine, Morgenstern, and Politycki. For him, pertinacity is an aesthetic obligation and he favours a seductive superficiality over a ‘stale inwardness’. Politycki’s collection of poems, Jenseits von Wurst und Käse [Beyond Sausage and Cheese], demonstrates this. The title itself marks the work as atypical, and many of the 44 poems confirm this finding. Matthias Politycki strains poetic conventions, but leaves no room for reproach when it comes to form - his poems are cunningly crafted. Poems such as ‘Ein Würstchenbudenbesitzer wünscht seinen Samstagsgästen guten Appetit’ [The Owner of a Sausage Stand Wishes His Saturday Guests Bon Appetit] or ‘Klofrau, das Ende der Sanftmut verkündend’ [Loo Attendant Declaring the End of Placidity] wear their hearts on their sleeves with their titles. Enough of lofty verses and high emotions – everyday life is entering poetry! Fresh, frivolous lines converge in a perfectly formed surface that, just the same, displays a fragility to the discerning reader. Wittiness and poetic pleasure do not allow us to forget that we are dealing here with a rebellious spirit who is also writing poetry for the sake of rebelling: a poem about writing poemsis of course not a poem. But the opposite:
evoking bottlenecks and the scent of corks… ... in the end it’s better to speak about the world sloshed, than suppress ‘drunken words’. Politycki does not, however, come across as an emotionally charged poet, but rather as an author who tries to actualise the lyrical programme by means of play. Everyday settings - such as the snack bar he sings about - may also be the stage for big emotions. Yet this fact is usually ignored by the lyrical canon. And that is exactly what Politycki is driving at with wit and humour in his poems. What’s more, he gives us great poetic fun.

[ Info ] Politycki, Matthias: Jenseits von Wurst und Käse. 44 Gedichte. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg, 1995 .