particle zoo

What if the smallest particles in the world, the invisible building blocks of life, could speak to us? What do we hear when we literary circle around their growth into granular constellations and their decay down to atomic fission? Carolin Callies explores this question in her poem. In a lyrical experimental setup, she looks not through a microscope but through the instruments of language at single-celled organisms, nuclei, and splinters, investigating their diverse connections in the human body as well as in nature. "Hello, hello," it sometimes calls out, "we wave to you through the magnifying glass!" Biblical and scientific creation myths resonate, letters and symbols trickle across the page, revealing the DNA of poetry. With 'teilchenzoo,' Carolin Callies undertakes a grand experiment to capture the tiniest in words. For her work on this, she was previously awarded a scholarship from the German Literature Fund as well as the promotion prize of the German Nature Writing Award.