Earth

by Sarah Kirsch

A poem from the collection 'Ice Roses: Selected Poems', translated by Anne Stokes. (Carcanet). This book was shortlisted for the Popescu Prize 2015, judged by Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard.

From the judges: "Ice Roses is the first Selected of Kirsch’s work to cover her entire lifetime (1935–2013), ranging from the early work shaped by the ‘ideological confines’ of her life in East Germany, to the ‘strange beauty’ of the late poems, inhabited by the stark, sodden landscapes of Schleswig-Holstein. Kirsch is a poet (and watercolorist) who looks to feel,who uses syntax as a painter does colour, producing a poetry of immediacy and ambiguity. Stokes’ lucid translation reveals Kirsch’s clear, curious voice, non-conformist in both politics and poetry, that makes the heart jump like ‘an egg in boiling water’. "

Sarah Kirsch

Sarah Kirsch (1935-2013) was a German poet who lived and worked in East Germany, and then, after political persecution, the West. She published ten collections of poetry.