I got the first ideas for Iwwer Tiermen from the poetry of Jean-Louis Kieffer. The Mosel-Fränkisch dialect he writes in fascinated me: it is recognisably German but heavily inflected; it is much less predictable than standard German; it incorporates archaic French words and phrases; there is a bizarre mixture of simple, almost banal language and complex flourishes. The content of the texts interested me just as much: the descriptions of soaring flight; the depiction of a culture embedded in its region yet sadly decaying; the humour and irreverence.
The title is not taken directly from Kieffer, but means "above towers" in Mosel-Fränkisch.
William Attwood
Iwwer Tiermen is available on disc four of the London Sinfonietta's Jerwood Series.
