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Distributed for Seagull Books

Thick of It

Distributed for Seagull Books

Thick of It

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.
 

96 pages | 5 x 8 1/2 | © 2018

The Seagull Library of German Literature

Poetry


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Reviews

“A volume of poetry to be read quietly—to be quiet then.”

NDR Kultur

Table of Contents

Translator’s Introduction

you wrote yourself the poem of it

NORTH
slender shadows
my friends
so I’ve been told
Tamangur
foam
like sunshine, like winter, like wind
geese
chorus
being 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 laughing
red rover, red rover
let’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

south
hunting 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 faithfully
yours sincerely
portrait of a woman
this photo of us
we’ve shut up shop
I
sway
conversation with the centaur
the shoes worn out with dancing
John
open your eyes!
noon
south
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
bouquets
Translator’s Acknowledgements

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