Eleonore Schönmaier’s Writing Space
I work in a room with a garden view. I own neither room nor garden, but I have a key.
From a dumpster I pulled out a small red-legged school table, and transported it by bicycle. I added a chair with a red seat. This is how my work in the room began. I’ve since found a larger second-hand desk delivered by the friend of a friend.
The walls are blank and the surface of the desk is mostly empty. There is no computer or internet in the room.
In this calm space I do my essential thinking, and I write out all my first drafts by hand.
When I enter my room I open a tin filled with tiny chocolate leaves. Before I begin to write I steep a pot of chai tea.
Eleonore Schönmaier’s latest collection is Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021). Wavelengths of Your Song (MQUP) was also published in German translation as Wellenlängen deines Liedes (parasitenpresse, 2020). Dust Blown Side of the Journey (MQUP) was a finalist for the Eyelands Book Awards 2020 (Greece). She has won the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, the National Broadsheet Contest, and was a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize, 2024. Her poetry has been widely anthologized in the United States and Canada including in Best Canadian Poetry. Greek composer Panos Gklistis commissioned poems from Eleonore for a song cycle. Composed for soprano, clarinet and piano, the three love songs were premiered by the Bosklank trio in 2024 in the Netherlands. Greek composer Michalis Paraskakis based the multi-media music-theater work Field Guide on text by Eleonore and the premiere will be June 2025 in Athens at the Epidaurus Festival.
https://eleonoreschonmaier.com/
Blog Image by Eleonore Schönmaier
Author photo is by Jorge López-Escribano