Newfoundland

"Unsearched finds are often called the happiest," writes Barbara Köhler at the beginning of her new book "Newfoundland," embarking with her texts to "discover what one does not already know. To find out what the impossible is." Her texts are journeys, starting from real places like Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, London, or Duisburg, from locations and their literal meanings, names, and history - journeys into a linguistic space ("into German-land"), or they traverse the spaces of other texts, exploring their U-topography: Gregor Samsa's room, for example, and the journey of all journeys, Homer's Odyssey. This book gathers different genres: alongside travel reports, there are also essays, speeches, and reflections. Yet it always revolves around poetry, that "art of the shortest paths and greatest distances from word to word," and the possibilities of languages to articulate differences.