Catlives

In contemporary times the phrase "popular poet" may sound like a contradiction, yet Sarah Kirsch comes at least close to meeting that description. After working briefly in a factory and studying biology at the University of Halle, she devoted herself to creative writing at the Johannes R. Becher Institute in Leipzig. Kirsch signed a protest against the expulsion of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann from East Germany in 1976 and then received permission to emigrate to West Berlin, where she lives today.

Since her first book of poetry Landaufenhalt (A Stay in the Country, 1967), Kirsch has gone on to publish many slim volumes of verse, in addition to a few short stories. In a land where both politics and metaphysics are discussed with particular passion, Kirsch has defiantly refused to be drawn into either. A sense of rebelliousness runs through her work, but it generally takes the form of guarding her personal autonomy. Though proudly feminine, she has repudiated any interest in feminist politics. She is openly idiosyncratic yet unpretentious and proud of her individuality.

The poems of Sarah Kirsch are generally meditative and, as she has explained on a number of occasions, are not intended to reveal themselves on the first or second reading. They are poems in which the reader feels that he or she is being treated with friendliness and respect.

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