Jürg Halter
Switzerland
Consigning him to a single field is impossible. One thing is clear: Jürg Halter’s medium is language. This Bernese poet, musician, performance-poet, visual artist, and rapper was born in 1980. For ten years, Halter was also active under the pseudonym Kutti MC. He studied visual arts at the University of the Arts Bern and describes himself as “unreasonably reasonable” or as a “disabused romantic.” His first collection of poetry, Ich habe die Welt berührt (I Touched the World), appeared in 2005 and received the Canton of Bern Book Prize. In his 2021 volume of poems, Gemeinsame Sprache (Common Language), Halser examines a society with more than a few things wrong with it. “Our society is riven. There are many fixed ideologies and groups that avoid interaction with others and ghettoize the truth,” Halter said in an interview about his most recent book. In it, he speaks of isolation in cities, drug intoxication in clubs, and invents an ABC that will never hurt anyone. Halter scrutinizes how language is made and when it disappears. In this process, the Bernese author finds a language with which he can talk about heavy and light matters.
He will also read new texts at the Leukerbad International Literary Festival.
Gemeinsame Sprache. Poems. Dörlemann 2021
Erwachen im 21. Jahrhundert. Novel. Zytglogge 2018
Mondkreisläufer. Play. Der gesunde Menschenversand 2017
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