Death Anniversary Get Together Invitation

In the combat zone of the forest

clamped in her new book of poems Ulrike Almut Sandig a poetic arc from north to south, creating distinctive landscapes between dream and everyday life.

A happy coincidence: the publication of "Thicket" falls within the proclaimed by the UN "Year of the woods" 2011th The forest as a faraway place that offers security and, yes, combat zone, we meet in Ulrike Almut Sandig new poems again and again. But the jungle holds ready for some surprises.

that are natural, home and childhood major themes in the lyrical works of the Leipzig Erin, you could already the much- Anthology "Streumen. Yet these issues are always occupied twice: Sandig poems never come home to nature or poetry. In "Streumen" preceding sentence "We Streumen sheer longing" for keeps "thicket" its validity. The word, combine in which place-name, movement, and dream is - to paraphrase Eichendorff - Ulrike Almut Sandig poetic divining. And this leads into the wide field of imagination.

"thicket" includes not only a seamless continuation of the predecessor. In its conceptual coherence of this band goes a step further: According to the directions "north" and "South" divides the "thicket" in two parts. Link is the only one poem comprehensive chapter on "Middle of the World". Content could be the two main chapters each of the areas of "home" and "Lives" map, while in the middle of the crack is that needs to be bridged. But as befits a thicket to keep behind the branches of the great chapter also provides a lot of little surprises. With fairy tale characters like Nachtalb ("the ugly pitch black horseman") and Erlkönig Ulrike Almut Sandig breaks her precise observations with an element of the surreal, which they already In its stories "Flamingos" used brilliantly. The transition from reality into the dream so also in the smallest space possible:

and hail in the morning and the storm in the night.
and air noise in the attic, all the bricks from the inside
antennas underneath hiding in the bad.
the noise of the screen. the gestures of brothers. the circles of
clouds and flew across the yard animals in a dream.

The common, overarching theme, however, is the forest that always puts its branches through the poems: The buzz of trees "refers to a poetic place, are suspended in the space and time. The origin of this leitmotif there are already "Streumen", especially in the "March forest". Described therein "treetops" dive in "Jungle" again. New to the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel forest ("Tamangur") is: As a rapt, poetic place of security, but even more threatening, he appears when he "grows around the room." And a combat zone in the forest, where the missing friends and lost things are ("my friends"), and where it is difficult to penetrate.

Ulrike Almut Sandig sets with "jungle" sovereign her poetic journey continues, and puts new fabulous terrain from. The sound remains distinctively beautiful and easy, and will leave the ground of reality, is the language yet so laconic simply that one has no difficulty in this fantastic in every way to keep track of poems.

Ulrike Almut Sandig: thicket. Poems. Frankfurt: Schöffling & Co., 2011th 80 pages, 16,95 €.