A touch of poetry at the German Emigration Center

“Giving young people the space to find their voice while showing everyone that poetry doesn’t have to be dusty or elitist.” This is the self-imposed goal of lyrix, a national competition for young poetry, in which young people aged 10 to 20 can participate. Rolf Stindl, chairman of the Friedrich-Bödecker-Kreis in Bremen, used this competition as an opportunity to hold a poetry workshop with students from a 6th grade class at the Edith-Stein-Schule in Bremerhaven. He chose the German Emigration Center as the backdrop for this and was able to enlist the experienced and award-winning writer Arne Rautenberg as the workshop leader.

Juggling colors as skillfully as words – poet Arne Rautenberg was a guest at the German Emigration Center on June 9. © Deutsches Auswandererhaus / Photo: Anastasia Pastuchov

The choice of Rautenberg was by no means accidental: Not only have the poems of the Kiel author appeared in numerous monographs, anthologies, as well as magazines and newspapers. In 2013, he also received the Liliencron Poetry Lectureship from the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel and was inducted into the German Academy for Children’s and Youth Literature in 2018.

When the verse expert Rautenberg and the “aspiring poets” met on June 9, 2022, in the Ditzen-Blanke Hall of the German Emigration Center, a relaxed and creative working atmosphere quickly emerged. The students demonstrated openness, a willingness to experiment, and above all, creativity, trying their hand at one-word poems or haikus and presenting them right away. It was exactly this informality in dealing with language and poetry that the students were meant to take away from the workshop.

Collecting words and ideas – the first sketches of a poem emerge on the flip chart. © Deutsches Auswandererhaus / Photo: Anastasia Pastuchov