After Eden

In her new book-length poem, Daniela Seel, a prize-winning poet and publisher, searches for a language »after Eden«. She listens intently for the absent heart sounds of her unborn child and the songs of exterminated whales, looks at Goya’s Black Paintings, reads Humboldt’s American travel diaries, and speaks of things about which science knows little: Dying. Being born. Vulnerability. Motherhood.

»Mum, why do the world and people exist? Was there a time when there was nothing, too?«, asks the child. »Nobody really knows«, answers the mother. »Maybe because of god.« - »But god is everything«, says the child. «Well maybe the world grew in god.«

In Daniela Seel’s reading, Eve left the Garden of Eden of her own accord. »She knew what she was doing when she ate it«. She »chose knowledge and desire. Chose courage.« Through her action, humans are »gifted unto death«, and also »unto the night«.

Daniela Seel’s poems reflect upon what this might mean for us today, while they follow the »light in the womb … kin to the light of the polar night … convivial, unruly, undeterred, I want to say, by death«.

»If we can expect solace or freedom from art, this paradoxically beautiful book-length poem points toward wide-open spaces.« Angelika Overath, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»The forms whispers to us what isn’t on the page. It bears witness to what was done and who will remain present in visible absence.« Insa Wilke, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Daniela Seel’s poems dance virtuously on the thin rope above the abyss of an inconceivably complex present.« Insa Wilke und Michael Braun, Deutschlandfunk

»Poetry today could hardly have a deeper connection to the world. With unusual verses and new verbs, Seel leads readers from the burning of witches to the destruction of the environment.« Björn Hayer, Berliner Zeitung