|
6:30 PM
Goethe Book Club: Ulrike Almut Sandig, "I Am a Field Full of Rapeseed..."
Goethe Book Club
-
Online Online
- Language English
- Price Free Admission; please RSVP
- Part of series: Goethe Book Club 2023
Read and discuss works by German authors in this series hosted by the Goethe-Institut Washington. All books can be read in English translation or in the German original; our discussion will be in English. Please Note: In order to participate in the online discussion (carried out over Zoom), registrants must obtain access to the work on their own. Hard copies of the work can be ordered through multiple vendors online; the eBook is also available for download to Kindle, iPad, and other digital reading platforms.
Zur Reservierung
I Am a Field Full of Rapeseed, Give Cover to Deer and Shine Like Thirteen Oil Paintings Laid One on Top of the Other, poems by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated into English by Karen Leeder - March 2021, Seagull Books
Original: ich bin ein Feld voller Raps verstecke die Rehe und leuchte wie dreizehn Ölgemälde übereinandergelegt - 2016, Schoeffling + Co
‘we find ourselves deep in the future of fairy tale.
we are the offspring of our own imaginings.’
Ulrike Almut Sandig’s second volume of poems to be translated into English is a journey through a world that is imaginary yet entirely recognizable. Precise observation of the concrete is mixed with playful humour, inspired musicality and an anxious reckoning with undercurrents of violence. Borrowing from the Brothers Grimm, the collection explores the darker side of their fairy tales as a backdrop for very contemporary concerns: Migration, war, the rise of the new right, ecological threat, information overload and political apathy. At the same time, Sandig plays with the German meaning of the word ‘Grimm’: rage. That emotion permeates the collection as a reaction to the darkness in the collective German consciousness. Yet the book is also animated by the passionate, expansive empathy—and reminds us what it is to be human. Always inventive, Sandig teases us here with multiple versions of the self, and multiple voices all in search of the origins of poetry in hidden places: in the silence before language, in the wings, in the field of rapeseed deep in the snow.
Source: Seagull Books
Cover image credit: Seagull Books
Born in former East Germany in 1979, Ulrike Almut Sandig has written two books of short stories, and four volumes of poetry as well as a novel. In 2021 she was invited to give the prestigious Thomas-Kling Poetics Lectures.
Karen Leeder is a writer, critic and prize-winning translator of contemporary German literature including work by Durs Grünbein, Volker Braun, Michael Krüger, Evelyn Schlag and Raoul Schrott.
-----
Discussion of the poetry collection will take place virtually via Zoom on Tuesday, April 18, at 6:30pm Eastern. Please RSVP via Eventbrite in order to receive discussion prompts and the Zoom invite link.
Discussion prompts from the facilitator will be emailed to all participants RSVP'd via Eventbrite in advance of the discussion. The Zoom invite and additional directions/tips for accessing the Zoom discussion will be emailed to all participants no less than 48 hours before the discussion begins. The discussion will take place in English.
The discussion for I Am a Field Full of Rapeseed... will be facilitated by Suzanne Zweizig. Suzanne Zweizig was the translation editor for poetry journal Poet Lore. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as Beloit Poetry Journal, Subtropics, Verse Daily, Poet Lore, and Waccamaw Review. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Washington, D.C. Arts Commission, and was a semi-finalist for The Nation/Discovery prize in 2003. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Florida, where she studied with German translator Michael Hoffmann, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Zur Reservierung
I Am a Field Full of Rapeseed, Give Cover to Deer and Shine Like Thirteen Oil Paintings Laid One on Top of the Other, poems by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated into English by Karen Leeder - March 2021, Seagull Books
Original: ich bin ein Feld voller Raps verstecke die Rehe und leuchte wie dreizehn Ölgemälde übereinandergelegt - 2016, Schoeffling + Co
‘we find ourselves deep in the future of fairy tale.
we are the offspring of our own imaginings.’
Ulrike Almut Sandig’s second volume of poems to be translated into English is a journey through a world that is imaginary yet entirely recognizable. Precise observation of the concrete is mixed with playful humour, inspired musicality and an anxious reckoning with undercurrents of violence. Borrowing from the Brothers Grimm, the collection explores the darker side of their fairy tales as a backdrop for very contemporary concerns: Migration, war, the rise of the new right, ecological threat, information overload and political apathy. At the same time, Sandig plays with the German meaning of the word ‘Grimm’: rage. That emotion permeates the collection as a reaction to the darkness in the collective German consciousness. Yet the book is also animated by the passionate, expansive empathy—and reminds us what it is to be human. Always inventive, Sandig teases us here with multiple versions of the self, and multiple voices all in search of the origins of poetry in hidden places: in the silence before language, in the wings, in the field of rapeseed deep in the snow.
Source: Seagull Books
Cover image credit: Seagull Books
Born in former East Germany in 1979, Ulrike Almut Sandig has written two books of short stories, and four volumes of poetry as well as a novel. In 2021 she was invited to give the prestigious Thomas-Kling Poetics Lectures.
Karen Leeder is a writer, critic and prize-winning translator of contemporary German literature including work by Durs Grünbein, Volker Braun, Michael Krüger, Evelyn Schlag and Raoul Schrott.
-----
Discussion of the poetry collection will take place virtually via Zoom on Tuesday, April 18, at 6:30pm Eastern. Please RSVP via Eventbrite in order to receive discussion prompts and the Zoom invite link.
Discussion prompts from the facilitator will be emailed to all participants RSVP'd via Eventbrite in advance of the discussion. The Zoom invite and additional directions/tips for accessing the Zoom discussion will be emailed to all participants no less than 48 hours before the discussion begins. The discussion will take place in English.
The discussion for I Am a Field Full of Rapeseed... will be facilitated by Suzanne Zweizig. Suzanne Zweizig was the translation editor for poetry journal Poet Lore. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as Beloit Poetry Journal, Subtropics, Verse Daily, Poet Lore, and Waccamaw Review. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Washington, D.C. Arts Commission, and was a semi-finalist for The Nation/Discovery prize in 2003. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Florida, where she studied with German translator Michael Hoffmann, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.