RALPH GNTHER MOHNNAU was born in 1937 in Bad Keuznach, Germany. An early interest in the poetry of the Middle Ages and Expressionism, as well as painting and ballet, led to his studies in English and Romance languages, earning him degrees in Law and Philosophy from the Universities of Mainz, Freiburg, and the Paris Sorbonne. Foreign studies took him to Greece, Egypt, North America, Africa, and Canary Islands, crediting his personal encounters with Martin Heidegger, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Charles Burkowski, Joan Miro, and John Cage as significant influences on his creative work. All told, he has published more than 60 volumes of his works, many of which have been translated into English, French, Spanish, Catalan, Chinese, and Japanese. His poems have been collected under the titles: Glass Gorse (1956), Red Blood Cells (1964), Anti-Bodies (1969), Gamma Rays (1974), Sowing Nightshade in the Wastelands of Cites (1987), On the Tidings of Time (2004), Weightless in the Light (2009) and Picasso -Painting with My Blood (2010). He has written a novel, Dance of the Condor, and translated Akhenaten's Song of the Sun, Sanskrit Love Lyric, and The Love Poems of Sappho. But Mohnnau's particular passion is for the art of Japanese haiku, and he has composed more than ten thousand - of which, only fifty-one have previously appeared in a limited artists' edition (2009). This current collection of 99 haiku was first published in 2011 by Weissbooks, Frankfurt am Main. An even larger collection, silent storm and red scents (2018) contains 68 volumes of haiku, while his most recent anthology, montmartre - red lights, blue night hours, reflects on his student days in 1960s Paris, in the form of Japanese haibun. Beyond poetry, he has written the libretti for Caroline (score by Michael Obst), German National Theatre, Weimar, and Wenn die Zeit ber der Ufer Tritt (score by Vladimir Tarnopolski), Bonn Opera and Munich Biennale. His collaborations with composer Matthias Raue have given birth to the rock operas: H - or, The Rainbow-Jumper (New York, 1985), MS Odysseus (Düsseldorf, 2007), Dämonie der Liebe (on the demonic love between Martin Heidegger and Hanna Arendt), Bern/Langenfeld, Switzerland, 2015, a music theatre piece on Rosa Luxemburg, and a dramatic work, Zeit der Muscheln (Cry of the Mantis), which has been staged in Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Atlanta. Beyond poetry, he has written the libretti for Caroline (score by Michael Obst), German National Theatre, Weimar, and Wenn die Zeit ber der Ufer Tritt (score by Vladimir Tarnopolski), Bonn Opera and Munich Biennale. His collaborations with composer Matthias Raue have given birth to the rock operas: H - or, The Rainbow-Jumper (New York, 1985), MS Odysseus (Düsseldorf, 2007), Dämonie der Liebe (conderning the relationship of Martin Heidegger and Hanna Arendt), Bern/Langenfeld, Switzerland, 2015, a music theatre piece on Rosa Luxemburg, and a dramatic work, Zeit der Muscheln (Cry of the Mantis), which has been staged in Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Atlanta. Mohnnau lives and works as a freelance author and lawyer in Frankfurt am Main, and is founder of Alpha Literatur Verlag/Alpha Presse, publishing the works of artists and painters, and artistically designed books, since 1967. He is a jury member of the opera minima project of the Bavarian State Opera/ Zurich Opera House, in the area of libretti.
