Timo Brunke is a freelance word artist by profession. After finishing his studies in Protestant theology prematurely and training as an actor with Frieder Nögge, he founded the Stuttgart Poetry Slam in 1999. Brunke has been performing his texts and programmes at home and abroad since 1993. In his solo programmes, he experiments with traditional forms such as the ode and the ballad as well as with the current forms of rap and spoken word. As a partner of Bas Böttcher, Timo Brunke has made guest appearances with the Textbox, the »smallest mass medium in the world«, at venues such as the New National Gallery in Berlin, the Centre Pompidou or international book fairs such as Beijing, Abu Dhabi or Bangkok. Timo Brunke has been working as a concert poet for several years. For the Hamburg classical music platform TONALi, he translated Robert Schumann's »Kinderszenen« as well as a selection of Johann Sebastian Bach's cello suites into words bar by bar. With the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, he premiered his first concert rhapsody »Hombre« in 2019. In June 2021, he performed at the Elbphilharmonie for the world premiere of the collaborative composition »Beenigma«, conducted by Garret Keast. Together with Sebastian Krämer, he is on tour with the shivering ballad programme »Zackebuh«. In 2019, he founded the Hölderlin Spoken Word Band to bring Hölderlin's poetry into a »risky exchange with the present«. In addition to his artistic work, Timo Brunke has been involved in language education work for many years. He is the author of several language playbooks for German lessons in the arts and trains German teachers at the Centre for Literary Education at the Literaturhaus Stuttgart.
Timo Brunke
