The weekend excursion, which the “umbrella poets” made from their Tassilo prize money, has rejuvenated Sophie Kompe significantly. At least felt. The 36-year-old leader of the group of poets saw herself as being transported back to her teenage years, as she explains, when her four roommates, mostly first-year students, suddenly began to speak quite bluntly about boys in the Tyrolean holiday home. During the excursion in autumn 2022, which primarily served as a poetic workshop – and in which three young male poets were also present – not only romantically inspired topics were discussed, but texts were generally discussed, played together, even snuggled up in groups and of course poetry was written. “You have to do that. You get to know each other in a completely different way,” Kompe recalls happily.
The founder and director of the Unterschleißheim “Umbrella Poets”, who were awarded a Tassilo main prize in 2021, is always surprised by the creativity and character traits that sometimes unfold in “her” young word acrobats: “It’s amazing what they can do trust how they develop. The stage makes personalities out of people.” The Umbrella Poets – who come from the orbit of the Unterschleißheim Carl-Orff-Gymnasium and meet once a week in the youth culture center “Gleis 1” to practice techniques of creative writing and lecturing – have not been very active in the recent past on stage.
In the winter and spring of 2022, for example, the second season of their short film series “Turn through Thursday” was shown in the local Capitol cinema screen in the “Capitol” and was then available on the poets’ YouTube channel. Not only Stefan Stefanov, the operator of the arthouse cinema, who himself received a Tassilo prize (2016), was enthusiastic. The mayor of Unterschleißheim, Christoph Böck, was so inspired by the films, poems and musical interludes of the Umbrella Poets when he visited the Dernière that he hired them as protagonists for the town’s “summer reception”.
In fact, the film evening once again made it clear what artistic potential is unfolding here. Just one example is Marie Berkholz, who won a prize at the Youth Film Festival Oberbayern 2021 with her turn-through film “Teenager”. The filming was done quite professionally, sometimes with drones, video editing effects or green screens. “The Tassilo Prize motivated us extremely to shoot a second season,” says Kompe. “We have invested quite a bit in the technology.” Some schoolgirls realized their ambitious and time-consuming film and text projects, even though they had to graduate from high school.
Poetry slammer in the future
Several members of the Umbrella Poets, founded in 2018, are now studying, some in Munich, some elsewhere. “There is a hard core that comes regularly, and we also have two from school,” said Kompe. This older generation, which is repeatedly invited to appear at company and club celebrations or charity events, will soon be growing. From February onwards, Sophie Kompe, who works as a freelance filmmaker, author and moderator, will be offering a second group for younger poets and future poetry slammers on a voluntary basis: children in the fifth and sixth grades at the Carl-Orff-Gymnasium. The weekly meetings in “Gleis 1” then take place one after the other on Wednesday evenings for the younger and older.
It can be said that the Umbrella Poets have become a local institution in a short space of time. Word has gotten around that young people meet there, try out poetic and playful things and act with professional quality on stage – not least because of the Tassilo Prize. The competitive nature of classic poetry slam competitions doesn’t play a role for them. “Teamwork is the priority,” says Kompe. At the Unterschleißheim Poetry Slams, which she helps to organize, the Umbrella Poets are not active as participants, but on the jury. Kompe, who, in addition to a love of language, wit and performance, above all tries to convey the necessary looseness, also wants to establish a reading stage on which her young students in particular can perform lyrical works: without competition – but probably also without group cuddles.