On this balmy day I travelled from Vienna to Berne for a reading at the library tonight. It feels as I have been using drugs the last couple of days.
In the hotel room I read a poem by Michael Hofmann: “Author, Author” – a rather devastating portrait of the author as a father, a husband and a taxpaying citizen:

“Imagine Flaubert with a wife and four children,
a bread-and-butter job at the university,
worries about taxes and high blood-pressure…

All obligations are a curse for the writer.
But for them you would still be the young man
with the ironical smile and porcupine haircut.”

Read the complete poem here.

The writer and his curses – he has no other choice than to turn his curses into raw material and he should never forget that most of his curses began as a blessing.