Ingeborg Drews

Poetry and Jazz

After five decades in the art world, Cologne-born Ingeborg Drews has mastered two mediums -- painting and poetry. She finds inspiration for her latest work in jazz, everyday life, and memories of the past.

Poet and visual artist Ingeborg Drews compares writing poems to stonemasonry. Just as she would with a sculpture, she says, she needs to chip away at a poem for many years before it is complete. But despite the laborious nature of the task, writing poetry is essential for this multifaceted artist.

"I first started writing poems about a girl I didn’t like at school," she laughs," I don’t know why, but it was something that needed to come out of me."

Drews, who is now 65, lives and works in Cologne, and has proven prolific, publishing three poetry anthologies: Five Paradise Stories in 1981, Am Rande der Stunden (At the Hour’s Edge ) in 1989, and Die Gewöhnliche Sternstunde, (Everyday Precious Moments in 1999. She has also published a book of poems accompanied by her etchings.

A difficult task, Drews has successfully mastered both the written word and visual image, gaining a reputation for the style and nature of her work. Once, when describing Drew’s work, the cabaret artist Jürgen Becker said,” what more can a painter say with words? Surly not more than what her paintings already say”.

Drawing inspiration from life

"I mostly get an idea when I am touched by something," she says. "Artists are vulnerable, so they fetch their subjects from reality -- for a poem you need to get the seed." Drews’ life has proven a fruitful garden.

Born in Cologne in 1938, young Inge grew up among the ruins of World War II. She emphasises the importance of this period and the influence it has had on her work. "I think childhood is the essence of a person," she says, "You can’t choose it and the older you get the more you look back on it. "

Indeed childhood has remained an important source of inspiration for her. "I often have the feeling that I look into the eyes of the child that I was,” she says. “Today I have the ability to understand this child." A good example of this can be found in Drew’s poem “Vif or Alive”, where she describes a child’s innocence as a gift lost by many adults.

Her love for color and images initially led Drews to study painting and graphic art in Cologne. From there she moved to Paris in 1959 and later to London – periods of her life she describes as times of great self-discovery. "You open yourself to completely different things if you learn and love a new language, " she says. “ When I wrote poetry in these languages I realised part of me could only express what I wanted to say in that language."

Coming of age with jazz

In Paris Drews encountered Jazz for the first time and it became another important influence on her work. In the 1950’s and early 1960’s, the French capital was a Mecca for many of America’s finest jazz musicians, and Drews had the chance to hear some of the world’s best. Some of these musicians, including Attila Zoller and Zoot Sims, became close friends and the subjects of her poetry.

"I heard lots of concerts and I learnt a lot about the importance of rhythm -- poetry is rhythm, you make music with words," she says. "I think people should think more about rhythm: our life has certain phases -- some good, others not so good -- and this all has a rhythm.”

Today, jazz still plays an important role in Drews’ work. She appears frequently with jazz musicians including Lajos Dudas/Clarinet and Philipp van Endert/Guitar in a programme called "Jazz and Lyrics", at jazz festivals all over Europe. Some of those lyrics are her own.

Words and Images

Inge Drews’ success as a poet has never distracted her from her original field of study, art. She has exhibited her artwork, which includes many portraits, etchings, photographs and paintings, around the world, including galleries in New York; Vienna and numerous galleries in native Germany.

For an artist straddling two mediums, inspiration is not enough. Discipline remains one of her most important attributes without which a poem or painting would never progress. "An idea can slip from your fingers if you can’t discipline yourself." she says: "Discipline is very important: For a poem you must be very pure, you must put everything away that might be excessive -- there shouldn’t be a single letter that is not necessary."

Today travel is less important to Inge Drews. She finds much of her inspiration in everyday life, perhaps most evident in the title of her last anthology, “Everyday Precious Moments”. Walks, nature, as well as many hours of solitude and journeys through her memories are also important to her creative process. "Today I am most inspired by the past; I notice I go further away from the present and current affairs," she says. "Growing old is not all bad", she adds. "When you are young you think too much and have so little patience; I find it wonderful to become slow -- I now have the right to go slowly."

Breandáin O'Shea