Otto Laske is a multilingual poet writing in English. Born in Oleśnica, Silesia, Poland, when it was still part of Germany, he is working on his sixth poetry collection, The Body Becomes An Eye, a meditation on Absence. His poetry has remained little known in the United States because his vocational life has also included work as a concert-music composer, digital visual artist, and consultant.
Laske seeks a poetry of enactment rather than declaration or self-staging, with musicality essential. Shaped by the European modernism of Rilke, Benn, and Celan, he has carried that legacy into English since emigrating to the US in 1966, joining it to American traditions, especially W. C. Williams and Denise Levertov.
His poems have appeared in international journals including Osiris. In 2022, Frieling Verlag, Berlin, published a bilingual selection of his poetry entitled Schlesische Sprachschmiede / Silesian Language Smithy (ISBN 9-783828037298). Since then, he has gathered his older collections into Songs of Exile and Return, forthcoming from Amazon Book Publisher.
In a transnational rather than purely American spirit, Laske treats thought as part of lyric music: conceptual distinction, articulation, and reflective pressure belong to the music itself. He resists reducing poetry to image or trimming thought to suit preferences for immediacy, plainness, or minimalism. His poems ask to be judged by their own movement, where thought, image, syntax, and feeling are indivisible.
Through https://www.nboughtonandolaskelegacy.com, Otto, now ninety, established a legacy writings series for himself and his late wife, artist and writer Nadine Boughton. Two books have appeared through Amazon Book Publisher: Boughton’s In the Lap of Night and Sixteen Sonnets and Laske’s first biography of her, Finding Wholeness in Art Making (both 2026). Further publications will include his Songs of Exile and Return and Edge Work, Boughton’s collected unpublished poetry, and her two literary nonfiction works, Coming Through: A Meditation on Birthing and Where I Come From: A Memoir in Images.
A video of Laske reading from his lifelong poetic work, framed by his electronic-acoustic music and commented upon by himself, is in preparation.
To listen to live readings of his poetry, go to https://ottolaske.com/poetry/english-rea... or https://ottolaske.com/poetry/german-read..., respectively. To locate videos of his public readings, go to https://ottolaske.com/poetry/. To view and listen to animations that combine his poetry with his electronic music and images, go to https://ottolaske.com/gallery/visual-mus..., selecting specifically "Treelink" and "Farewell to Los Angeles". In these works, poetry read aloud by him is treated along a scale from autonomous poetic speech to one kind of sound materials among others.
A recording of a 2019 poetry reading is found at https://archive.gloucesterwriters.org/wp...
ART WORK OUTSIDE OF POETRY Those interested in Otto Laske's visual art work are invited to go to https://www.saatchiart.com/olaske or https://www.saatchiart.com/olaske?srslti.... Those interested in his instrumental/vocal and electronic music are invited to go to https://ottolaske.com/music/
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