Writing is craft, some say; it is inspired input, others think … and it is most definitely both, I maintain.

In my previous work, I have often understood poems as “fragments”. Shards whose edges are sharp and whose edges are toothed, and when they are laid one against the other, a picture emerges – a mosaic of word facets and sound games; and between the lines, an inkling of what is meant, nothing more.

With my poems, which can be found here on the website and which are gradually emerging within the framework of our project, things are a little different. They follow a track that thematically forms the framework, and they are actually no more than an attempt at a linguistic gesture: a touch.
For this, it is important to me that the words do not simply lie two-dimensionally on the paper like a manual of tactility, but that, surrounded by a sound backdrop, they also make tangible that closeness of which they speak.
Embedded in the liturgical context, the texts should bear witness to my searching, questioning, doubting, believing, stumbling and falling towards Him, but not least they should also give expression to my occasional looking.

And the more I try to find words for my “lyrical confession of faith” that resemble a touch, the more clearly I notice that I cannot get past the angels for this. So there will be a reason why the hands of the messengers carry such an important meaning.

Writing poems that are of a sacred nature, but nevertheless do not fall back on pre-formulated prayers, shows me how much more there must be in and between all the lines that are actually supposed to be dedicated to God, and how much preliminary work would have to be done in order to touch HIM at all to some extent, linguistically.
For that is my wish and goal in equal measure: to feel with words as with fingers.
What remains is – as in Michelangelo’s fresco “The Creation of Adam” – a gap between the fingertips and thus the question of whether HE allows Himself to be touched by me at all.

ul