This group is of special value to me. It is the only writing group I join. And the switch to the English language and also to lyrics is key to it, as are the writers whom I am happy to meet there—so many different lives, ages, countries, writing experiences, and fates. It is not so easy to mix language issues with life issues when talking about a poem. Also, especially in this group, a feminist perspective is demanded. I stopped writing poems in the German language, but continued to write them in English. My English personality as a writer is different from my German identity, though I don’t believe in the concept of identity. (Given that it is given and not stolen, then another perspective is asked for.)

My German identity as a writer hates a lot about language itself, due to experiences in this language, I guess. I hate to explain or to use rhetorical figures, though I do. I am more on the destructive side of language, this urge to destroy it because of what is done using this language, in the German language, etc. In the English language I feel more free: no experiences, only songs or poetry, and also, because of a small vocabulary, I mostly go with the sound of the words, which helps poetry.

What I love about this group is the miracle of writing together in such different time zones, and zones at all, and the idea that this must create some intertext, some INBETWEENTEXT, SIMULTANEITY—sometimes this happens with the subjects we write about, or within them.