WINNER, English PEN Award. Translated from German by various hands. English texts only.
Published April 2025. Paperback, 204pp, 9 x 6ins, £16.95 / $25 ISBN 9781848619074 [Download the Introduction and contents pages here]
This is the first major anthology of contemporary German-language poetry in English for more than 40 years. As Nicola Thomas says in her Introduction:
“English-language readers have relatively few opportunities to encounter con-temporary German-language poetry; the simple purpose of this anthology is to offer one such opportunity, in the form of a selection of recent poems translated from the German for an English-language audience. It has been noted that the last twenty or so years have been a moment of great vitality for the German-language lyric, much of the excitement of which has passed English-speaking countries by, for want of translations, and particularly for want of a selection of translated works gathered in one place. It is our hope that the poems presented here speak largely for themselves: that they offer range and variety, something for (almost) everyone, that they make visible some lines of connection in terms of form, style and theme—and, above all, that they show English-speaking readers a glimpse of the vibrancy of the German-language lyric in the first part of the twenty-first century.”
The selection of poets owes much to the tutelary spirits of three senior figures: Elke Erb, Friedrike Mayröcker, and Thomas Kling, without whom the landscape of current writing in German is unthinkable.
Authors included here are Yevgeniy Breyger, Sonja vom Brocke, Alexandru Bulucz, Carolin Callies, Ann Cotten, Ulrike Draesner, Oswald Egger, Elke Erb, Daniel Falb, Christian Filips, Dinçer Güçyeter, Martina Hefter, Jayne-Ann Igel, Hendrik Jackson, Thomas Kling, Dagmara Kraus, Birgit Kreipe, Nadja Küchenmeister, Jan Kuhlbrodt, Georg Leß, Friederike Mayröcker, Christoph Meckel, Steffen Popp, Kerstin Preiwuß, Monika Rinck, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Sabine Scho, Daniela Seel, Verena Stauffer, Ulf Stolterfoht, Sebastian Unger, Anja Utler, Peter Waterhouse, and Uljana Wolf.
The translators are: Shane Anderson, Kurt Beals, Paul-Henri Campbell, Aimee Chor, Ann Cotten, Brian Currid, Andrew Duncan, Joshua Daniel Edwin, Christopher Fenwick, Gerald Fiebig, Iain Galbraith, Robert Gillett, Nicholas Grindell, Catherine Hales, Christian Hawkey, Jayashree Hari Joshi, Alexander Kappe, Karen Leeder, Grace Nissan, Kerstin Preiwuß, Caroline Wilcox Reul, Bradley Schmidt, Jake Schneider, Joel Scott, Sophie Seita, Donna Stonecipher, Nicola Thomas, Amy Visram and Jana Maria Weiß.
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