Otto Laske is a bilingual poet writing in English. Born in Oleśnica, Silesia, Poland, when it was still German, he is presently at work on his sixth English poetry collection ("Edge Work: Conversations with Absence"). Having mostly published in international journals like Osiris (since 1992), in 2024-25, he gathered his collections under the title of "Songs of Exile and Return", still unpublished, in two Parts: lyrics and prose poems. The bulk of his English poetry is presently unknown in the American poetry environment, mainly due to the fact that he has also been a composer of concert music for 45, and a digital visual artist for 15, years. However, a selection of his English poetry appeared in 2022 in a bilingual selection of his poetry at Frieling Verlag, Berlin, Germany, in the form of translations of poetry written in German, under the title of "Schlesische Sprachschmiede / Silesian Language Smithy" (ISBN 9-783828037298), he being his own translator.
Otto combines in his work European and American traditions, naturally blending them in the spirit of contemporary American poetry. He strives for a poetry of enactment rather than declaration and self-staging, finding musicality to be a non-negotiable aspect of poetry.
Otto is also the editor of Nadine Boughton's (his deceased wife's) poetry ("In the Lap of Night and Sixteen Sonnets", AMZN, 2026), and is presently working on bringing out her unpublished poems and creative non-fiction, among them her essay on "Finding Wholeness Through Art Making: A Search for Authentic Living", a profound study of the creative process focused the archetype of the Feminine.
To listen to Otto Laske's English and/or German 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 being treated as sound material not different from, and intermingled with, musical sound.
Audio 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/
Presently, Otto is interested in a group of established writers who deal with issues of composition rather than just single poems, meaning that they understand Gertrude Stein's statement that "it is composition that makes all the difference", -- who thereby recognize a meta-level of writing "above content" that has to do with how parts of a poetry collection dialogue with each other, and thus determine (or influence) how individual pieces are to be understood.
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