Other activities

One of my favourite voluntary activities is to provide a new poem once a week (not mine!) to be hung in the local organic food shop “Löwenzahn” in Castrop-Rauxel, belonging to Ludger Vollmer (not the Green politician). This gives me a good opportunity to get acquainted with classical German poetry. I call the series Feinkost für die Seele which might roughly be translated as Soul Food.
Here's a fine seasonal poem to celebrate the summer .

SOMMER

Am Abend schweigt die Klage
des Kuckucks im Wald.
Tiefer neigt sich das Korn,
der rote Mohn.

Schwarzes Gewitter droht
über dem Hügel.
Das alte Lied der Grille
erstirbt im Feld.

Nimmer regt sich das Laub
der Kastanie,
auf der Wendeltreppe
rauscht dein Kleid.

Stille leuchtet die Kerze
im dunkeln Zimmer.
Eine silberne Hand
löschte sie aus.

Windstille, sternlose Nacht.

Georg Trakl (1887-1914)

Visit this page regularly to see the current poem featured in Löwenzahn. Or visit the shop (it's opposite the main post office) and ask the owner, Ludger Vollmer, to recommend one of his fantastic cheeses. He also has regular wine tastings where you can catch up with the best of organic wines.

I am constantly being asked to give talks and lectures to various institutions, ranging from adult educational institutes, colleges and universities to clubs and societies. I have also developed a one-man show called Shakespeare in Love, in which I talk about Shakespeare and his life, interspersing my comments with readings from the sonnets and famous monologues. The most interesting development from my talks on the Ruhrgebiet in Germany has been a two-hour one-man cabaret in German (!) entitled "Roy KifFt im Pott. Ein engländer stolpert durch’s Revier”. For those in need of an explanation, the German word for smoking marijuana is “Kiffen”. Roy Kift, therefore, literally sounds like “Roy smokes pot”. The phrase "im Pott" is a common term used to mean in the Ruhrgebiet, as is “das Revier”. This explains the rest of the title, "an Englishman staggers through the Ruhrgebiet". I sometimes offer a half an hour version to friends and acquaintances on the celebratory occasions.
Another result of "Tour the Ruhr" is that I am sometimes asked to give people guided tours of the Ruhrgebiet, both in English and German.
A new development in my activities has been recording English texts for documentary films and museum guides.
I keep in touch with current theatre trends in Germany by writing criticism for the American Theatre Journal "Western European Stages", which is published by the Central University of New York.