Chewing gum or cigarette vending machines are well known, but poetry vending machines are less so. Matthias Göritz, who was awarded the Villa Concordia fellowship in 2013/14, builds such machines and will put one into operation at the Künstlerhaus - together with the poet and translator Volha Hapeyeva!

The principle is simple: The vending machine, usually filled with toys for children or refreshing candies, dispenses poetry from poets. Insert coin, press button, and a box pops out from the bottom. A note with a poem was found inside: sueddeutsche.de/muenchen. This version, designed for its location in Bamberg, will also be filled with poems by lyricists whose entire body of work has been honored by the Free State of Bavaria with the Villa Concordia fellowship.

The two authors build on this idea with the Nobel Prize speech by the Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky, who in 1987 called for poems to be available at every gas station and classics to be available in cheap editions. They are the mental fuel for the day, a "colossal accelerator of consciousness, thought, and perception of the world": koerber-stiftung.de/projekte