The Berlin Writers’ Workshop is proud to present the launch and celebratory reading of The Loveliest Vowel Empties with ap Berlin. presents The Loveliest Vowel Empties presents for the first time in English the collected poems of legendary Swiss Surrealist Meret Oppenheim, printed with facing-page originals in German and French. Kathleen Heil will discuss her approach to translating the poems and read excerpts from the book, followed by a conversation with contemporary art critic and curator An Paenhuysen.
Meret Oppenheim was born in Berlin in 1913 and died in Basel in 1985. Best known for Object, her fur-lined teacup from 1936, her expansive body of work included painting, drawing, sculpture, object constructions, jewelry designs, and poetry.
Kathleen Heil is a writer/translator and choreographer/performer whose poetry, prose, and translations appear in The New Yorker, Fence, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. Originally from New Orleans, she lives and works in Berlin.
An Paenhuysen is an art critic, cultural historian, and curator of contemporary art in Berlin. She has written for Berlin Art Link, Contemporary &, and Spex, and co-curated exhibitions at the Hamburger Bahnhof and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien.
Oppenheim’s poetry—49 poems written between 1933 and 1980—moves beyond Surrealism to inhabit a voice all her own, with imagery and sound that, as the Herald Tribune wrote, “express witty and poetic responses to the surprises of life.”
A key figure of the Paris art scene in the 1930s, Oppenheim moved in a circle that included André Breton, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Elsa Schiaparelli. Writing for the Village Voice about her work, Gary Indiana noted that “the singularity of Meret Oppenheim’s work is such that nothing seems dated … the range of the work and its quirky self-assurance are striking.” The publication of her collected poems coincides with a major retrospective exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Menil Collection, and the Kunstmuseum Bern.