Daniela Seel Receives the Kleist Prize 2025
News14.04.2025
The 2025 Kleist Prize has been awarded to the poet, author, translator and publisher Daniela Seel, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1974.
In keeping with the tradition of the Kleist Prize, the author and journalist René Aguigah – entrusted by the jury of the Heinrich von Kleist Society with the task of picking the recipient – has selected Daniela Seel. In his public remarks, he explained his decision as follows: »Daniela Seel makes words and things vibrate. In her poems, we find stones, graves, and snow – or a children’s hospital that was part of the German killing machine. As Eve leaves paradise, she encounters Alexander von Humboldt as he travels through America. Murdered children appear next to children who teach their mothers how to die – and who breathe life into the text. All this in verses that set their heterogeneous material in motion. Sounds flow into each other, words are crossed out, lines overlap. Ultimately, the reading eye is invited to enter the text. Only active reception makes sense here, a sense that is always multiple. Smooth transitions: this is something that can also be found between the author's various volumes of poetry. Certain motifs recur from ich kann diese stelle nicht wiederfinden (2011) to Nach Eden (After Eden, 2024), each time in a new guise. Working with language, which simultaneously unsettles and opens up new possibilities, is just one of the links with Kleist’s work. In a present that brings common sense to power in its merciless unambiguousness, Daniela Seel's poetry belongs in the toolbox for survival.«
In Daniela Seel, the Kleist Prize is honouring a writer for whom poetry is a way of life. She not only works as a poet herself, she is also a respected publisher. In 2003, together with the graphic designer Andreas Töpfer, she founded the publishing house kookbooks, which champions hybrid poetic and essayistic forms and views publishing as an artistic practice. Her first poetry collections ich kann diese stelle nicht wiederfinden (2011) and was weißt du schon von prärie (2015) were also published by kookbooks. Both her books and kookbooks as a publisher have received numerous awards, and her poems have been translated into 13 languages. In 2019, her book Auszug aus Eden (Departure from Eden) was published by Verlag Peter Engstler. Daniela Seel's most recent volume, After Eden (2024), was published by Suhrkamp Verlag.
The Kleist Prize is sponsored by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and the Ministries for Science, Research and Culture of the states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Previous winners include Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Clemens J. Setz, Esther Kinsky, and Yoko Tawada.
The award ceremony will take place on November 23 in Berlin.
In keeping with the tradition of the Kleist Prize, the author and journalist René Aguigah – entrusted by the jury of the Heinrich von Kleist Society with the task of picking the recipient – has selected Daniela Seel. In his public remarks, he explained his decision as follows: »Daniela Seel makes words and things vibrate. In her poems, we find stones, graves, and snow – or a children’s hospital that was part of the German killing machine. As Eve leaves paradise, she encounters Alexander von Humboldt as he travels through America. Murdered children appear next to children who teach their mothers how to die – and who breathe life into the text. All this in verses that set their heterogeneous material in motion. Sounds flow into each other, words are crossed out, lines overlap. Ultimately, the reading eye is invited to enter the text. Only active reception makes sense here, a sense that is always multiple. Smooth transitions: this is something that can also be found between the author's various volumes of poetry. Certain motifs recur from ich kann diese stelle nicht wiederfinden (2011) to Nach Eden (After Eden, 2024), each time in a new guise. Working with language, which simultaneously unsettles and opens up new possibilities, is just one of the links with Kleist’s work. In a present that brings common sense to power in its merciless unambiguousness, Daniela Seel's poetry belongs in the toolbox for survival.«
In Daniela Seel, the Kleist Prize is honouring a writer for whom poetry is a way of life. She not only works as a poet herself, she is also a respected publisher. In 2003, together with the graphic designer Andreas Töpfer, she founded the publishing house kookbooks, which champions hybrid poetic and essayistic forms and views publishing as an artistic practice. Her first poetry collections ich kann diese stelle nicht wiederfinden (2011) and was weißt du schon von prärie (2015) were also published by kookbooks. Both her books and kookbooks as a publisher have received numerous awards, and her poems have been translated into 13 languages. In 2019, her book Auszug aus Eden (Departure from Eden) was published by Verlag Peter Engstler. Daniela Seel's most recent volume, After Eden (2024), was published by Suhrkamp Verlag.
The Kleist Prize is sponsored by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and the Ministries for Science, Research and Culture of the states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Previous winners include Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Clemens J. Setz, Esther Kinsky, and Yoko Tawada.
The award ceremony will take place on November 23 in Berlin.