Long Evening of Sonnets
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant." (Emily Dickinson, 1868)
The Sonnet Workshop presents:
You. Your sonnets. The best of the workshop and your own four walls.
And you’re invited to do more than just listen: dig your own sonnets out of your drawers and hard drives and apply for our open call! We will select three reading slots for October 7th from all submissions.
A reading spot, all the glory, and champagne: the order of the three winners will be announced on the evening itself.
The evening will be musically accompanied by Marc Ottiker and his band project, Mo & Kapelle.
Open Call
You may submit a maximum of three sonnets per author. Submissions must be anonymized, meaning two separate text documents (.docx) must be sent as email attachments:
- one document containing your name, a short biography, contact details (email address and/or phone number), and a unique code word of your choice
- a separate document containing the submitted sonnets, WITHOUT your name, but including the same code word used in the document with your personal details
Please send the texts and your personal details as separate .docx files to: rez.bi@web.de
The submission deadline is September 15, 2026.
There is no specific theme for submissions, but there is a motto: "Tell all the truth but tell it slant."
Those who have won a reading slot will be notified by the end of September. Unfortunately, we cannot send notifications to the other participants. We kindly ask that you refrain from follow-up inquiries.
The competition is open exclusively to authors based in Berlin/Brandenburg or those who are able to arrange their own travel to the event. Travel and accommodation costs cannot be covered.
Michael M. Janßen
Born: 1962 in Goslar, started school in English in Canada in 1968, returned to Germany bilingual in 1970.
Education: Studied German language and literature, English studies, and journalism in Göttingen.
Lived: in Budapest from 1996 to 2021. Taught German there and has been writing the prose poem since 1996 Abschiednehmen Mit Worten
And continues writing: sonnet after sonnet since 2021 in Berlin
Role: Served as volunteer vice-chair of the Autorenforum Berlin from 2023 to 2024
Held a two-part workshop in May 2026, upon which this open call is now based.
Publications/Awards:
From the long poem Abschiednehmen Mit Worten two chapters were awarded the Aurum Prize in 2021 and published in the anthology Fernwärme .
Mo & Kapelle
The country music of Swiss author ("Risikoappetit") and filmmaker ("1/2 Miete") Marc Ottiker creates a unique sense of inner home, somewhere between Alpine folklore and widescreen Westerns. It is timeless music that explores transience and fleeting moments of happiness – performed in both Swiss German and Standard German. He has already released three albums with his band project "Mo & Kapelle." He is accompanied by guitarist and photographer Uwe F. Arens, who, like Ottiker, has also been living in Berlin for decades.
