Ice Roses: Selected Poems

Gathering works from the 11 prize-winning collections of acclaimed contemporary German poet Sarah Kirsch, this bilingual volume includes poems that have never previously been translated to English. Having first lived and worked in East Germany and then—following political persecution—in the West, finally making her home in Germany’s rural Schleswig-Holstein state, Kirsch provides a writer’s-eye perspective on Germany’s varied postwar existences. Though it is rarely overtly political, her poetry, with its free-flowing syntax and fluid sound patterning, bespeaks her lifelong resistance to constraint and convention. Fresh translations of the work capture the characteristic sounds and rhythms of Kirsch’s writing, and bring the full range of her poetry—from the earliest East German volumes to the last books, full of the enigmatic beauty of the Schleswig-Holstein landscapes—to an Anglophone readership.

Sarah Kirsch was a German poet and translator. A staunch opponent of the East German socialist regime, she was excluded from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and had to leave the country. During her life she was awarded various prizes, including the Petrarca-Preis Literary Award. Anne Stokes holds a PhD in German literature from Ohio State University. She teaches translation at the University of Stirling.