Whether in poetry, fiction, radio drama or sound installations, Esther Dischereit's work represents a unique departure in recent European writing: a distinctive, off-beat syntax of German-Jewish intimacy with the fractured consciousness and deeply rutted cultural landscape of today's Germany. Sometimes a Single Leaf, mirroring the development of Esther Dischereit's poetry across three decades, includes selections from three of her books as well as a sampling of more recent, uncollected poems. It is her first book of poetry in English translation. In the words of her translator: ‘Esther Dischereit’s poetry offers a visceral pathography of post-war continuities, spectres, amnesia and trauma. Her work builds on the poet’s vulnerability and witness to a previous and ultimately un-sealable dimension – a dimension inhabited in a different way by the poetry of Paul Celan – in which the violations and degradation of the Shoah resonate with harrowing persistence in the detail of contemporary everyday life. At the same time, however, her poems test moments of personal and poetic redress, espousing forms developed in an incessant exploration of speech rhythms and images, celebrating the erotic and quotidian, experimenting with hope, seeking community.’
Circa l’autore
Iain Galbraith lived in Scotland for much of his life before moving to Germany, where he still lives. He has edited five poetry anthologies and is highly respected as a translator of both literary works and poems, for which he has won multiple awards, such as the John Dryden Translation Prize in 2004, the Stephen Spender Prize for Translation in 2014 and the Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize in 2015. His own poetry has been featured in publications such as The Edinburgh Review and The Times Literary Supplement. He has translated works both to and from English, and has conducted research and lectures on poetry at the University of Edinburgh and the University of the Applied Arts in Vienna, respectively.