L\u00fctfiye G\u00fczel was born in Duisburg-Hamborn in 1972. She grew up speaking Turkish and German in the Marxloh district. After studying for a few semesters at the University of Duisburg, she became a freelance poet and author.<\/p>\n
In her texts, poems, and short prose, she reflects on existential themes such as origin, loneliness, and poverty, which she embeds in everyday observations at social hotspots in the Ruhr area. These texts about the Ruhr rust belt, with their frank tone are often seen to follow in the footsteps of Charles Bukowski or William Carlos Williams or are associated with the \u00bbSocial Beat\u00ab of the 1990s. Initially, G\u00fczel distributed her work as leaflets or as stickers, and published them in various literary and city magazines. Her first two books, \u00bbLet\u2019s go G\u00fczel!\u00ab and \u00bbHerz-Terrorist\u00ab (\u00bbHeart-terrorist\u00ab, 2013) were published in a small Duisburg publishing house in 2012. G\u00fczel demonstrates her mastery of small form and the two books resonated greatly with the public and the press. After the third volume \u00bbTrist ol\u00e9!\u00ab (tr: Dreary ol\u00e9!), whose texts are also shaped by the basic tone of disillusion in Duisburg, G\u00fczel said goodbye to conventional publishing houses and, since 2014, has published her novellas, poems, and monologues under her own label Go-G\u00fczel-Publishing. G\u00fczel\u2019s novel \u00bbOh, No!\u00ab was published in 2016. This novel is again set in the place of her birth: \u00bbHere was Duisburg. Marxloh. [\u2026] The police officers no longer dared to go in there. Only the rats, they said. People who woke up every day, went to school, went to work, […] stole, fought, hit, cheated, helped, jumped, sneaked, pressed, oppressed, died, rested, bought flowers, rushed, married, bought, slept, everyone and everything rats.\u00ab Her limited edition leaflet \u00bbElle-Rebelle\u00ab (2017; tr: She Rebel) was followed by \u00bbNix Meer\u00ab (2018; tr: Nothin\u2019 [to] Sea). The long poem is dubbed as an incident about melancholy and \u00bbWeltschmerz\u00ab (universal pain) of a poetic \u00bbI\u00ab. Most recently, G\u00fczel published her volume of poetry \u00bbDreh-Buch\u00ab (2019; tr: Screen-Play). The work is an arrangement of 50 fragmentary texts intended to serve as outlines for a screenplay. The work includes comments, scraps of monologues, stage instructions, and observations.<\/p>\n
In addition to her work as a writer and poet, G\u00fczel leads poetry workshops at schools and museums. For her work, she was awarded the first ever Fakir Baykurt Culture Prize by the city of Duisburg in 2014 and the Ruhr Literature Prize in 2017. The Germanist Hannes Krauss praised the outstanding feature of G\u00fczel\u2019s work as \u00bbnon-conformity \u2013 with norms, conventions, customs and expectations\u00ab. In 2016, G\u00fczel was the city writer-in-residence in Cologne-M\u00fclheim. She lives in Duisburg and Berlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14400,"template":"","jct-role":[1080],"jct-origin":[495],"jct-ilb-years":[614],"class_list":["post-40489","authors","type-authors","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","jct-role-author","jct-origin-germany","jct-ilb-years-2020-en"],"yoast_head":"\n