Christoph Keller

If there's an artist whose oeuvre merits the title " creation," it is Sebastian St hrer. Shaping clay-- essentially, soil-- he molds his " denizens" colorful and friendly-looking sculptural beings, some of them enhanced with sticks or branches reminiscent of limbs. Despite their air of levity and humor, they are not the products of mere momentary inspiration or a whim. It takes decades of dedicated experimentation with the kiln based on the millennia-old art of ceramics as well as expert knowledge of chemistry and physics to create such colors and shapes. St hrer has been called an alchemist, and indeed he has made it his mission to vindicate this researcher's craft, an ancestor of the natural sciences. Alchemy, like St hrer's oeuvre, combines pure rationality with coincidence and a scintilla of magic. The artist plays an intuitive and sensual game with his clay and the virtually incalculable chromaticity of the glazes-- chaos, anarchy, and irrepressible urges being an integral dimension of all creation. In St hrer's " denizens," we encounter the embodiments of that creation: likenesses of ourselves and perhaps also heralds of a future more good-natured version.

'Fascinating ... compelling ... very funny' Sunday Times'A defiant call to arms ... affecting ... lingers long in the memory after its final page' Morning Star'A skilful act of literary witness, sharp, moving and funny' Joanne Limburg 'Christoph Keller ... ranks among the great Swiss writers' Neue Zürcher ZeitungMost stories of disability follow a familiar pattern: Life Before Accident. Life After Accident. For Christoph Keller, it was different: his childhood diagnosis with a form of Spinal Muscular Atrophy only revealed what had been with him since birth. SMA III, the 'kindest one', allows those who have it to live a long life, and it progresses slowly. There is no cure. By the age of 25, he had to use a wheelchair some of the time. 'There were two of me: Walking Me. Rolling Me.' By 32, he could still walk into a restaurant with a cane or on somebody's arm. At 45, 'Rolling Me' took over altogether.Intimate, absurdist and winningly frank, Every Cripple a Superhero is at once a memoir of life with a progressive disorder, and a profound exploration of the challenges of loving, being loved, and living a public life - navigating restaurants, aeroplanes, museums and artists' retreats - in a world not designed for you. Threaded throughout are Keller's own photographs of the unexpected beauty found in puddle-filled 'curb cuts', the pavement ramps that, left to disintegrate, form part of the urban obstacle course. Those puddles become portals into a different, truer city; and, as they do, so this book - told with humour and immense grace - begins to uncover a truer world: one where the 'normal' is not normal, where disability is far more widespread than we might think, and where there always exist, just alongside our own, the lives of everyday superheroes.

Who owns the past? Are museum archives and their re-collections of cultural heritage a cult of the dead — and if so, are we living in a necropolis? This book on photography, cemeteries, and the archive evolved out of an experimental research project at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, with its immense collection of canonic photographs from the history of art and architecture. An artist’s book, it takes on the form of a description of an unfinished film in five acts — a cinematic fragment, so to speak: DOPOSTORIA. The title essay by Christoph Keller is complemented by two contributions on burial cultures in prehistory and in modernity from the archaeologist Maria Clara Martinelli and the modern historian Carolin Kosuch. A sequence of collages at the back of the book conjures up a phantasmagorical journey through an ancient-modern Rome.

'Fascinating ... compelling ... very funny' Sunday Times'A defiant call to arms ... affecting ... lingers long in the memory after its final page' Morning Star'A skilful act of literary witness, sharp, moving and funny' Joanne Limburg 'Christoph Keller ... ranks among the great Swiss writers' Neue Zürcher ZeitungMost stories of disability follow a familiar pattern: Life Before Accident. Life After Accident. For Christoph Keller, it was different: his childhood diagnosis with a form of Spinal Muscular Atrophy only revealed what had been with him since birth. SMA III, the 'kindest one', allows those who have it to live a long life, and it progresses slowly. There is no cure. By the age of 25, he had to use a wheelchair some of the time. 'There were two of me: Walking Me. Rolling Me.' By 32, he could still walk into a restaurant with a cane or on somebody's arm. At 45, 'Rolling Me' took over altogether.Intimate, absurdist and winningly frank, Every Cripple a Superhero is at once a memoir of life with a progressive disorder, and a profound exploration of the challenges of loving, being loved, and living a public life - navigating restaurants, aeroplanes, museums and artists' retreats - in a world not designed for you. Threaded throughout are Keller's own photographs of the unexpected beauty found in puddle-filled 'curb cuts', the pavement ramps that, left to disintegrate, form part of the urban obstacle course. Those puddles become portals into a different, truer city; and, as they do, so this book - told with humour and immense grace - begins to uncover a truer world: one where the 'normal' is not normal, where disability is far more widespread than we might think, and where there always exist, just alongside our own, the lives of everyday superheroes.

A collection of twelve homilies at funerals by Christoph Keller, III, an Episcopal priest and theologian.

A beautiful hardcover Pocket Poets collection of poetic tributes to beer from around the world and through ages. From the ancient "Hymn to Ninkasi" (the Sumerian goddess of beer) to eighth-century Chinese poet Li Bai's "Bring in the Ale" to Robert Graves's "Strong Beer," the poems collected here attest to humankind's long attraction to the foamy and intoxicating product of malted grains. A surprising variety of poets have penned tributes to the brew; their tantalizing poems include Robert Burns's "John Barleycorn," Edgar Allen Poe's "Lines on Ale," Frank O'Hara's "Beer for Breakfast," Sylvia Plath's "The Beer Tastes Good," Muriel Rukeyser's "Beer and Bacon," and Tom Waits's "Warm Beer and Cold Women." Whether pulling up to the celestial bar in Keats's "Mermaid Tavern" or to the grittier, jazzier one in Carl Sandburg's "Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio" (where "the cartoonists weep in their beer"), lovers of beer and poetry are sure to find something to celebrate in these tantalizing pages.

Gobshite Quarterly Summer/Fall 2018, #31/32 features: Every Edge a Centre is an ongoing series of mythopoetic reasoned rants and essays: Nebraska novelist & O. Henry nominee Poe Ballantine looks back at a 1960s relationship with a legend in "Every Edge A Centre: Another zucchini bar, Ken?" (in Eng./Sp./Croat.); Adelaide-based poet & essayist Judith Steele writes about escaping the age of Trump, even in the Outback, in "Every Edge A Centre: Travelogue Monologue, Flinders Ranges, So. Oz." (in Eng./Sp./Croatian); Germ. film scholar Janina Bocksch & Barcelona-based Oz essayist & cineaste Adrian Martin write about Charles Laughton's classic noir & chess in "Night of the Hunter: Black is to Move" (in Eng./Span./Croatian). We have two comics: Award winning Little Beirut, Oregon poet & artist Leanne Grabel graces us w/a life of Dorothy Parker for children of all ages, "A Sad Story About a Big Brain: Illustr." (in Eng./Span./Icelandic/Croatian). Rotterdam-based illustrator T nia Cardoso collaborated w/ writer Joana Vardona for the comic book "Garandinha"--excerpted (in Eng./Portuguese). & we have an Indonesian Dragon fr. Japanese artist Midori Oki, & Croatian illustrator Dusan Gačic has a very pictoral "Diary" (in Croat./English). Bestselling Swiss novelist Christoph Keller, who divides his time betw. St. Galen & N.Y.C., offers us 5 Jazz flash fictions inspired by jazz classics & the lives of the musicians who wrote them ("Solo Flight"/"Blood Count"/"New Rhumba"/"My Friend Mindy"/"Sound Seekers"). Fr. Bowling Green Ohio, Michael Lohr gives us orig. bad boy & eternal rock-'n'-roller Edgar Allen in "The Ghost of Poe" (in Eng./Icelandic/Finnish/Sp.). Little Beirut writer Davis Slater observes a very very very angry carney in "9 Kinds of Sucker" (Eng./Span./Croat./Japanese). & we've got poets fr. all over: Greek poet & editor Dinos Siotis ponders paradoxes of "Faith" (in Greek/Eng./Lithuan./Span./Japanese). Croat. editor & poet Ivan Herceg visits "Limbo" & thinks "About Impossible Faces" (in Croat./Eng./Span./Lithuanian). Award winning Croatian poet Lana Derkač comes to a "Conclusion" & makes an appointment with "Doctor January" & enters a "Covenant with Dust." Also fr. St. Galen, Clemens Umbricht visits "The Room of False Things" & hangs "Untitled" on a wall & gets lost in "Rain-washed Amsterdam" & then takes "A Stroll in July" (in Germ./Eng./Croat./Spanish). Award winning Slovenian poet & E.R. doctor Veronica Dintinjana goes to midnight mass to visit the "Cathedral Lions" & then loiters "Outside the City Gates" (Slovenian/Eng./Lithuan./Russian/Croat./Spanish). South Oz expat Jan Herschel has lived on the Left Coast since 1982, & makes a wistful wish in "Add to Cart" (Eng./Span./Russian/Icelandic/Finnish). Adelaide poet Judith Steele, winner of the Red Earth Poetry Award discovers "Quiet" (in Eng./Russian/Croat./Spanish). Little Beirut drive-by poet Pecos B. Jett tells us the one about "Snoring Beauty" (in Eng./Jap./Russian/Finnish/Spanish).