Verena Stauffer conquers the ORF best list with Kiki Beach”!

Verena Stauffer conquers the ORF best list with Kiki Beach”!

Verena Stauffer, an up-and-coming poet from Upper Austria, is at the top of the world with her volume of poetry “Kiki Beach”. ORF books best list for June reached. The volume deals with the topic of love in all its facets and combines this with experimental content that oscillates between Greek mythology and the modern digital world. Stauffer currently lives in Vienna and will take part in the prestigious Bachmann Prize at the end of June 2025.

The 49th Days of German Language Literature will take place from June 25th to 29th and Stauffer is one of the 14 participants. She is looking forward to the experience ahead, but has stressed that she does not want to read her poems in Klagenfurt. Her new text for the competition impressed juror Klaus Kastberger because it was based on a simple sentence from a story told. This is not her first time at the Bachmann Prize: she submitted an entry in 2018 but was unsuccessful.

Content and style of “Kiki Beach”

The poetry collection “Kiki Beach” is divided into seven chapters – a number traditionally associated with love. Stauffer uses a sometimes relaxed tone and combines myths with fantastic worlds and digital spaces. The prologue opens with a pyrotechnic spectacle and encourages reflection on the boundaries between the civilized and the animal. This love of literature is also evident in the many literary allusions and references to well-known authors such as Dylan Thomas and Oscar Wilde. At the end of the volume, Stauffer presents a list of “co-writers,” including Yi Lei and Bianca Stone, who contributed to her creative process.

A central theme is the complexity of love and grief, which is strongly present in her poems. Personal experiences are also included, such as the influences from her childhood in the Kalkalpen National Park. The volume of poems also addresses the tension between reality and virtuality and illuminates the relationship between nature poems and love poems, with plants and animals being incorporated into the depictions.

Literary prizes and their meaning

Stauffer is not only a talented poet, but also part of a larger literary context that brings the importance of literary prizes into focus. A DFG project has been examining the functions and effects of literary prizes in German-speaking countries since 1990. The aim is to analyze the effects of these prizes on literature and the cultural sector. Prizes contribute to the diversification of the literary field and can open up new market segments. This could shed new light on the hierarchies of genres and works and promote the ennobling of new voices in literature.

Stauffer sees her poetry not only as an artistic form of expression, but also as a political voice. In her view, poetry serves as a source of comfort and protection. Her works reflect both personal and social issues and offer complex perspectives that encourage the audience to reflect.