Friederike Mayröcker

Friederike Mayröcker, Vienna, in 1974.
Ernst Jandl and Friederike Mayröcker, at a public reading in Vienna, 1974

Friederike Mayröcker (born 20 December 1924 in Vienna) is an Austrian poet.

Life

From 1946 to 1969 Mayröcker was an English teacher at several public schools in Vienna. In 1969 she took a release from working as a teacher and in 1977 she retired early.

She started writing as a 15 year old. In 1946 she published her first works in the journal Plan.

Friederike Mayröcker is recognized as one of the most important contemporary Austrian poets. She also had success with radio plays. Four of them she wrote together with Ernst Jandl, with whom she lived together from 1954 until his death in 2000.

Mayröcker describes her working process as follows: "I live in pictures. I see everything in pictures, my complete past, memories are pictures. I transform pictures into language by climbing into the picture. I walk into it until it becomes language."[1]

Works

Radio plays

with Ernst Jandl:

Libretto

Awards

Sources

  1. In: Heimspiel (Journal of ORF – public Austrian radio station) March 2007, p. 5

References

External links