A reading of texts in German and English by the author and the translator, Gwendolyn Leick

Rosa Pock is an accomplished Austrian writer yet she is still relatively unknown in the English speaking world. As a step to remedy this situation, the Austrian Cultural Forum London presents an evening of readings taken from her major works to date.

Rosa Pock, born in 1949 in Styria, studied Philosophy in Salzburg. In 1972 she married the writer and poet H. C. Artmann and until the 1990s she was known rather as his partner than a writer in her own right. Unlike Artmann, who was versed in many languages and whose writing was inspired in part by translations, Rosa worked entirely within the German idiom. She found a ‘polyvocality’ – meaning she does not have one particular style, or voice, but invents a new one for almost every piece of writing. This rich and varied repertoire of dictions and forms of literary expressions will be explored this evening with excerpts from works such as Monolog braucht Bühne and Eine kleine Familie. She has published five books of prose as well as numerous literary articles in magazines. Her literature prizes include Forum Stadtpark literature prize (1996), the Italo-Svevo-prize (2006), and the Literature
Prize of Styria (2007). She currently lives and works in Vienna.

Gwendolyn Leick was born 1951 in Oberaichwald, Carinthia and studied Assyriology in Graz. Her academic publications include Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (1994), The Babylonians. An Introduction (2003). Her collection of prose texts, Die äussere Form der schriftlichen Arbeit, will be published by Jung und Jung in 2011. She lives and works in London.