Two months ago was a wonderful day when I was very stressed. There was a book, and a lot of people, and a lot of talking, and a lot of congratulations. And I sometimes don’t believe that it happened.
I have been collecting leaves off the ground for the last five years and I decided to put them together for a little thing of poetry. Naïve, young, self-teaching poetry. The little things you write about people but never want to show them, you know? The little dark thoughts, the pretentious thoughts, the thrill of new experiences. The desire for the new, the desire for the foreign.
Loose-Leaf Poetry is a collection of things I picked up from Sofia to Luxembourg, from home to abroad. Very often it’s about aches and longings, about being lost in a new country. It’s about the chocolate house right opposite the Duke’s Palace, about love (with a sort of eros-thanatos kind of vibe), about shame and shamelessness; about Luxembourgish.
It’s about me; and also not about me.
So you have thirty loose leaves, how do you tie them together? What’s the fil rouge? Is it even going to be rouge? Is it going to be a fil? Why not glue or a stapler? Why not hang them back on a tree? Well, let me be honest. These loose leaves, most of them I don’t recognize anymore.
And that was the red string – these loose leaves, they are all the same, but they don’t belong together. They have a kind of inherent self-denial to them. This is why each section has a self-negating title, such as:
MÄI GROUSSEN OEUVRE GESÄIT KLENG AUS
(Ech hu mat vill Leit geschwat a kee kann zoustëmmen, wann een “mäin” oder “meng Oeuvre” seet.)
It was a lot of fun and stress to prepare, so I hope others can enjoy it as much as I did. I would like to thank, as always, my dear friend-and-colleagues Cosimo Suglia and Nicolas Calmes for contributing to this project. As seen in the featured image, Nicolas’ sketches visualize the text (literally!) in a captivating way; Cosimo’s insight helped me see my writing in a different way.
This will be cheesy, but: maybe poetry is the friends we made along the way.
I invite you to read about the places where you can find loose leaves: dreams, fireplaces, shallow waters. Dreams, fireplaces, Loose-Leaf Poetry.
You can buy a print copy of Loose-Leaf Poetry at Ernster in Luxembourg, or by e-mailing the publisher: dbreckletzebuerg@gmail.com (Price: €10)
Lëtz Write 
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