Ann Cotten Biography
Ann Cotten is a poet, prose author, and translator. She was born in Iowa in 1982 and moved to Vienna in 1987. She studied Germanistics at the University of Vienna and has been living in Berlin since 2006.
Since 2000, her poetry, prose, essays and illustrations have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Die Rampe, Kolik, Zwischen den Zeilen, and Schreibheft. Her first collection of poetry, Fremdwörterbuchsonette (Suhrkamp), came out in 2007. She also published a book on concrete poetry entitled Nach der Welt: Die Listen der Konkreten Poesie und ihre Folgen (Klever Verlag) in 2008; a collection of poetry called Florida-Räume (Suhrkamp) in 2010; and her first full length book of work in English, I, Coleoptile, (Broken Dimanche Press) in collaboration with the artist Kerstin Cmelka came out in 2010.
I'll speak for you, so hush.
Shut up, I say. Come now,
come on, be calm, I say, I'll do the words
and when I'm done we can climb in together.
...
All swans are called Reinhard. Not really, I know
they just look like it. Like a certain look. And so
- - - - - - beep - - - crumbs and they are merely
what they might think (no no no). They wear glasses
...
They are not there for anyone to live on
and really, they can only do things wrong.
They swallow hooks with little pain
but monofilaments get them first.
...
Trade will always be the same, but you can always leave.
Hercules & Atlas
Bleed the Lily gently, palpitate the Thorny Rose,
The Tulip dreams, the sturdy one, upon her sweetened rows.
...
A terrible claw has hit me
it lives in the picture carpet
don't ask me I don't know
what it is but it is
...
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