Ovids Würfelspiel

Volker Sielaff is regarded as a literary solitary who works with great concentration on his poetics of re-enchantment of the world. He now presents a volume of epigrams and other short poems. The epigram has a long tradition. Originally intended as an inscription for a votive offering, a work of art, or engraved on a memorial stone, it developed in ancient Greece into a very short, concise form of poetry that could also express the feelings and thoughts of the respective author. Volker Sielaff takes up this form in a variety of ways and brings it into the present with great sovereignty. Some of the texts, reflecting perceptions of nature, evoke a lightness reminiscent of ink drawings of Japanese origin. The author hints at an affinity for Japanese philosophy and poetry, which, in their reduction and simultaneously effective sensuality, are closely related to epigrammatic expression.