The poems of Ulrike Almut Sandig are at once simple and fantastic. This new collection finds her on her way to imaginary territories. Thick of It charts a journey through two hemispheres to “the center of the world” and navigates a “thicket” that is at once the world, the psyche, and language itself. The poems explore an urgently urban reality, but that reality is interwoven with references to nightmares, the Bible, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes—all overlaid with a finely tuned longing for a disappearing world. The old names are forgotten, identities fall away; things disappear from the kitchen; everything is sliding away. Powerful themes emerge, but always mapped onto the local, the fractured individual in “the thick of it” all. This is language at its most crafted and transformative, blisteringly contemporary, but with a kind of austerity, too. By turns comic, ironic, skeptical, nostalgic, these poems are also profoundly musical, exploiting multiple meanings and stretching syntax, so that the audience is constantly kept guessing, surprised by the next turn in the line.  
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Translator’s Introduction you wrote yourself the poem of itNORTH slender shadows my friends so I’ve been told Tamangur foam like sunshine, like winter, like wind geese chorusbeing inspected behind my eyes nightmare for the beast my dog’s heart shining practice for being away heavy creatures of the skies from the plane you see was once catfish one apple, two cups forgotten denuded trees friends still laughingred rover, red roverlet’s flatten the grass, keep quiet, keep still to the centre of the world centre of the world the centre of each of our bodies southhunting song everyone else was lost without trace Sydney the open sea what happened next we do not know ear under the churchyard the glittering cities of central Europe roar yours faithfullyyours sincerely portrait of a woman this photo of us we’ve shut up shop I swayconversation with the centaur the shoes worn out with dancing John open your eyes! noonsouth it will all still be there everything comes the white surface that is your heart all that you and I know song 8 taken leave Notes bouquetsTranslator’s Acknowledgements
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780857428356
Publisert
2021-05-11
Utgiver
Vendor
Seagull Books London Ltd
Høyde
203 mm
Bredde
127 mm
Dybde
8 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
96

Oversetter

Biographical note

Ulrike Almut Sandig was born in Großenhain in 1979 and grew up in Saxony. She has published two books of short stories, Flamingos and Book Against Disappearing, and four volumes of poetry. Karen Leeder is a writer, translator, and academic and teaches German at New College, Oxford.