Theo Breuer
Encyclopedia
Theo Breuer is a German poet, essayist, editor, translator and publisher.
) and educated at Cologne University
where he studied German and English linguistics
and literature
. He has written many books of poetry and essays on contemporary literature since 1988. In collaboration with artists and poets in Canada, England, Italy, Japan, the USA and other countries, he has published experimental and visual poetry
. In 2007, Redfoxpress (Dugort, Achill Island
, County Mayo
, Ireland
) published Word Theatre, a selection of Breuer's visual poetry. Breuer has participated in numerous mail art
projects since 1991 together with artists such as Ryosuke Cohen
, György Galántai, and Litsa Spathi
. He has written a number of long essays and monographs exploring the widely-ramifying possibilities of literary expression and verse-forms since 1989 and portraying poets such as Hans Bender
, Thomas Bernhard
, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
, Michael Hamburger
, Ernst Jandl
, Thomas Kling
, Friederike Mayröcker
, W. G. Sebald
and plenty of others.
Theo Breuer’s poems have been translated into English, French, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Russian and published in numerous national and international anthologies, calendars, catalogues, literary magazines, and the Internet. He has translated two books of poetry by Richard Burns
(aka Richard Berengarten) into German: Tree (Baum, 1989) and Black Light (Schwarzes Licht, 1996). In 2009 he participated in Richard Burns, Volta: A Multilingual Anthology, issue 9 of The International Literary Quarterly (London).
At his small press, Edition YE, which he founded in 1993, Breuer also publishes the poetry magazine Faltblatt (Flyer), the YE international anthology series, an assemblage with original art and handwritten poetry containing original works by approx. 300 authors and artists from 28 countries, among others John M. Bennett
, Guillermo Deisler
, or Michael Leigh, and a series of contemporary German poets.
As editor of an annual anthology of handwritten poetry he has collected original autographs by well-known poets such as Hans Bender, Richard Burns, Günter Kunert
, Walter Helmut Fritz, Michael Hamburger and many more. Each issue of these hand-bound artists' books also contains original art by contemporary international artists.
As permanent freelancer of the German annual Muschelhaufen
(edited by Erik Martin
) from 1994 - 2008 Breuer contributed essays and reviews on mail art, contemporary poetry and prose as well as portraits on coeval authors and small presses.
A fabulous reader not only of his own poetry, Breuer presents overviews of German poetry from the beginnings in the Middle Ages
up to the present in the 21st century.
Theo Breuer lives in the village of Sistig (municipality Kall
) in the Eifel National Park
near the Belgian border.
Life and work
Theo Breuer was born in Bürvenich (RhinelandRhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
) and educated at Cologne University
University of Cologne
The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...
where he studied German and English linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
. He has written many books of poetry and essays on contemporary literature since 1988. In collaboration with artists and poets in Canada, England, Italy, Japan, the USA and other countries, he has published experimental and visual poetry
Visual poetry
Visual poetry is poetry or art in which the visual arrangement of text, images and symbols is important in conveying the intended effect of the work. It is sometimes referred to as concrete poetry, a term that predates visual poetry, and at one time was synonymous with it.Visual poetry was heavily...
. In 2007, Redfoxpress (Dugort, Achill Island
Achill Island
Achill Island in County Mayo is the largest island off the coast of Ireland, and is situated off the west coast. It has a population of 2,700. Its area is . Achill is attached to the mainland by Michael Davitt Bridge, between the villages of Gob an Choire and Poll Raithní . A bridge was first...
, County Mayo
County Mayo
County Mayo is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the village of Mayo, which is now generally known as Mayo Abbey. Mayo County Council is the local authority for the county. The population of the county is 130,552...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
) published Word Theatre, a selection of Breuer's visual poetry. Breuer has participated in numerous mail art
Mail art
Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...
projects since 1991 together with artists such as Ryosuke Cohen
Ryosuke Cohen
is a mail artist. He was responsible for the Brain Cell mail art project, which he began in June of 1985 and retains thousands of members in more than 80 countries, e.g. Hans Braumüller, Theo Breuer, Michael Leigh or Litsa Spathi. In August 2001 he began the Fractal Portrait Project...
, György Galántai, and Litsa Spathi
Litsa Spathi
Litsa Spathi is a Greek painter, performer and Fluxus artist, currently living in Heidelberg, Germany and Breda, Netherlands. She makes collages, objectbooks, fluxus poetry and large acrylic paintings. She used to be active in mail art as well. Her paintings belong to the category fantastic realism...
. He has written a number of long essays and monographs exploring the widely-ramifying possibilities of literary expression and verse-forms since 1989 and portraying poets such as Hans Bender
Hans Bender
Hans Bender was a German lecturer on the subject of parapsychology, who was also responsible for establishing the parapsychological institute Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg. For many years his pipe smoking, contemplative figure was synonymous with German...
, Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called "the most significant literary achievement since World War II," is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.- Life :Thomas Bernhard was...
, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
Rolf Dieter Brinkmann was an important poet of German Pop-Literatur. He also wrote Keiner weiß mehr , a novel of modern family life. His early writing was inspired by Gottfried Benn and the French nouveau roman...
, Michael Hamburger
Michael Hamburger
Michael Hamburger OBE was a noted British translator, poet, critic, memoirist, and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and W. G. Sebald from German, and his work in literary criticism...
, Ernst Jandl
Ernst Jandl
Ernst Jandl was an Austrian writer, poet, and translator.- Poetry :Influenced by Dada he started to write experimental poetry, first published in the journal "Neue Wege" in 1952....
, Thomas Kling
Thomas Kling
- Life :Thomas Kling was born in Bingen am Rhein, grew up in Hilden and went to school in Düsseldorf. He studied Philology in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Vienna and lived in Finland for a certain period. Since 1983 he presented his poems on public performances – first in Vienna, than in the Rhineland...
, Friederike Mayröcker
Friederike Mayröcker
Friederike Mayröcker is an Austrian poet.- Life :From 1946 to 1969 Mayröcker was an English teacher at several public schools in Vienna. In 1969 she took a release from working as a teacher and in 1977 she retired early.She started writing as a 15 year old...
, W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald
W. G. Maximilian Sebald was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors and had been tipped as a possible future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature...
and plenty of others.
Theo Breuer’s poems have been translated into English, French, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Russian and published in numerous national and international anthologies, calendars, catalogues, literary magazines, and the Internet. He has translated two books of poetry by Richard Burns
Richard Burns (poet)
-Life and work:Richard Burns was born in London into a family of musicians. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge and University College London. He has lived in Greece, Italy, the UK, the US and former Yugoslavia...
(aka Richard Berengarten) into German: Tree (Baum, 1989) and Black Light (Schwarzes Licht, 1996). In 2009 he participated in Richard Burns, Volta: A Multilingual Anthology, issue 9 of The International Literary Quarterly (London).
At his small press, Edition YE, which he founded in 1993, Breuer also publishes the poetry magazine Faltblatt (Flyer), the YE international anthology series, an assemblage with original art and handwritten poetry containing original works by approx. 300 authors and artists from 28 countries, among others John M. Bennett
John M. Bennett
John M. Bennett is an American experimental text, sound, and visual poet.- Writing and publishing :As well as steadily producing and distributing his own work, Bennett, through "Luna Bisonte Prods", a small press founded in 1974, has published thousands of limited edition items by writers who...
, Guillermo Deisler
Guillermo Deisler
Guillermo Deisler was a stage designer, visual poet and mail artist. In his country of birth, Chile, as well as during his long and difficult exile his rich and imaginative work constituted the centre of his life.- Life :Deisler was born in Santiago, Chile as the son of a family that had immigrated...
, or Michael Leigh, and a series of contemporary German poets.
As editor of an annual anthology of handwritten poetry he has collected original autographs by well-known poets such as Hans Bender, Richard Burns, Günter Kunert
Günter Kunert
Günter Kunert is a German writer who left the German Democratic Republic to live in the Federal Republic of Germany ....
, Walter Helmut Fritz, Michael Hamburger and many more. Each issue of these hand-bound artists' books also contains original art by contemporary international artists.
As permanent freelancer of the German annual Muschelhaufen
Muschelhaufen
Muschelhaufen is a German annual, originally combining literature and graphic arts. It was founded by Erik Martin from Viersen in 1969 and published - with an interruption of 11 years - until 2008, when the last issue came out Muschelhaufen (heap of shells) is a German annual, originally...
(edited by Erik Martin
Erik Martin
Erik Martin is a German writer, songwriter and composer of songs. He is the founder and editor of the literature and art magazine Muschelhaufen.-Life and work:...
) from 1994 - 2008 Breuer contributed essays and reviews on mail art, contemporary poetry and prose as well as portraits on coeval authors and small presses.
A fabulous reader not only of his own poetry, Breuer presents overviews of German poetry from the beginnings in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
up to the present in the 21st century.
Theo Breuer lives in the village of Sistig (municipality Kall
Kall, Germany
Kall is a municipality in the district of Euskirchen in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the Eifel hills, approximatively 20 km south-west of Euskirchen.- References :...
) in the Eifel National Park
Eifel National Park
The Eifel National Park is the 14th national park in Germany and the first in North Rhine-Westphalia.- General :The aims of the Eifel National Park accord with those set out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Ressources, IUCN. These require that at least 75 percent...
near the Belgian border.
Poetry
- Wortlos (Wordless), 2009.
- Word Theatre. Visual Poetry, 2007.
- Nacht im Kreuz. (Night in the Cross), 2006.
- Land Stadt Flucht (Country City Getaway), 2002.
- Alpha und Omega und (Alpha and Omega and), 1998.
- Das letzte Wort hat Brinkmann (Brinkmann Has the Final Say), 1996.
- m%nday, 1996.
- Black Box. Visual Poetry, 1995.
- Der blaue Schmetterling (The Blue Butterfly), 1994.
- Mittendrin (Right in the Middle), 1991.
- Eifeleien (EifelEifelThe Eifel is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the south of the German-speaking Community of Belgium....
Poems), 1988.
Monographs
- Kiesel & Kastanie. Von neuen Gedichten und Geschichten (Pebble and Chestnut: New Poems and Prose), 2008.
- Aus dem Hinterland. Lyrik nach 2000 (From the Hinterland: Poetry Since 2000), 2005.
- Ohne Punkt & Komma: Lyrik in den 90er Jahren (Without Full Stop & Comma: Poetry in the Nineties), 1999.
Secondary Literature
- Kürschners Deutscher Literatur-Kalender, Saur, München 2010.
- Matthias Hagedorn: Wortlos und andere Gedichte. Zu Wort kommen lassen. Eine Würdigung des Lyrikers, Herausgebers und Verlegers Theo Breuer. In: Süddeutsche ZeitungSüddeutsche ZeitungThe Süddeutsche Zeitung , published in Munich, is the largest German national subscription daily newspaper.-Profile:The title literally translates as "South German Newspaper". It is read throughout Germany by 1.1 million readers daily and boasts a relatively high circulation abroad...
vom 18. Januar 2009. http://jetzt.sueddeutsche.de/texte/anzeigen/461967. - Andreas Noga: Wortlos und andere Gedichte, Poetenladen, Leipzig 2009 http://www.poetenladen.de/andreas-noga-theo-breuer-wortlos.htm.
- Christoph Leisten: Poetisches Denkmal für das mittelgebirgische Dorf. Zu Theo Breuers Gedichtband »Land Stadt Flucht«. In: Der Dreischneuß. Halbjahresschrift für Literatur, Lübeck 2003.
- Heinz Ludwig Arnold und Jörgen Schäfer (Hg.), Popliteratur, edition text + kritik, München 2003.
- Das Kölner Autorenlexikon 1750-2000. Zweiter Band 1900-2000, Emons, Köln 2002.
External links
Note: The following links are in German.- Official Website (German)
- Theo Breuer at Poetenladen (Poets’ Shop)
- Review Aus dem Hinterland. Lyrik nach 2000 (From the Hinterland: Poetry Since 2000)
- Review Kiesel & Kastanie. Von neuen Gedichten und Geschichten (Pebble and Chestnut: New Poetry and Prose)
- Theo Breuer: Mail Art In: Wandler. Zeitschrift für Literatur. Vol. 18
- Matthias Hagedorn: Aus dem Hinterland