In Real Life
Ulrike Almut Sandig was born in the late GDR and now lives with her family in Berlin. Various story collections, pop music albums, radio pieces, five poetry collections and her novel Monsters like us (Seagull Books 2022 Longlisted for Dublin Literary Award 2024) have been published to date.
For her poetry performances she works with composers and performance artists, such as Hinemoana Baker (New Zealand Aotearoa), Alif (India) and Grigory Semenchuk (Ukraine).
She is frontwoman of the poetry collective Landschaft fusing poetry, film and loop-based electronic music. Ulrike Almut Sandig is a member of the European poetry platform Versopolis and founding member of the German PEN section Berlin.
Click here for more info about the author
Read some poems in translation by Karen Leeder on Versopolis
Shining Sheep (Poems)
Translated by Karen Leeder.
Published by Seagull Books 2023.
Read some poems of it on Versopolis.
„Ulrike Almut Sandig’s surreal, incisive, playful poems are translated from the German by Karen Leeder, whose nimble versions keep pace with the dives and swings in theme and style.“ Sylee Gore on Poetry Foundation. Read the full review here
In the beginning was the light, or was it the Lumières? In Ulrike Almut Sandig’s latest volume of poetry, it is only a leap from the creation of the world to the symphony of the Berlin metropolis. And there is a question holding out off the coast of Lampedusa: Can shining sheep be used as night storage for the dark hours, when we are overwhelmed with fears of God, of a gym teacher with a whistle, of mothers with eyes as black as coal? In devastating sequences, Sandig charts the reality of an abused child, victims of contemporary war, or a fourteenth-century Madonna. Full of humor, musicality, lightness, and rage, Shining Sheep is not just visual poetry—it has loops in your ear and filmic explosions of imagery for all your senses.
Monsters like us (Novel)
Translated by Karen Leeder
Published by Seagullbooks, 2022.
Longlisted for Dublin Literary Award 2024.
Ruth is a concert pianist and often booked and on the road. Privatly she suffers from a difficult relationship with her violent boyfriend Voitto. In throwbacks we learn about her childhood in the opencast mining area of Saxony during the time of the GDR, overshadowed by sexual abuse and violence. Only Viktor, her long time friend, knows what has happened to Ruth. After the peaceful revolution in 1989 he becomes a Skinhead `til he manage to change his mindset. Viktor moves to Paris and gets payrolled by a wealthy family. When Ruth arrives in Paris to play a gig we’ve come full circle. Monster is the first novel by Ulrike Almut Sandig. The slightly dark story makes one think about what abuse and violence causes in a child. In a way this novel is also a tribute to music as an universal cure.
‘[A] musicality, together with the compelling narrative, makes Monsters Like Us a novel to be read and re-read; one discovers different layers of meaning on revisiting the text. Though pervaded by melancholy, it offers some hope for a better future, at least in the figure of Ruth. Far from being the “dummy-doll” of her childhood, she ultimately finds the strength to rebel and stand up for herself.’— Fiona Graham, Litro. Read the full review here.
I Am a Field Full of Rapeseed, Give Cover to Deer and Shine Like Thirteen Oil Paintings Laid One on Top of the Other (Poems)
Poems. 80 pages.
Translated by Karen Leeder
Published by Seagull Books 2020.
Karen Leeder’s translation of Ulrike Almut Sandig’s innovative 2016 poetry collection allows space for a startling variety of distinct speakers. Characters from Grimm fairy tales wait beside voices recognisable from present-day bus-stop and street. The fairy tale theme (wolves, Hansel and Gretel) runs throughout this collection, the first half of which deals boldly with conflict and war crimes in recent memory. Leeder shapes a polyphonic work where Fitcher’s bird bathes in honey before butchery and priests lift from the ground. The title of this book is a beauty in itself, making it an excellent clue to what lies within.—Judges’ citation for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize (Shortlisted)
Poetryfilms
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This poetryfilm is dedicated to the German poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 – 1843) who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. SHINING SHEEP (Leuchtende Schafe) is a consolation for the sleepless, the despaired, the left alones of our own century. Good night, Friedrich, sleep tight.
POETRY, MUSIC & STARRING Ulrike Almut Sandig
EMGLISH TRANSLATION Karen Leeder
VIDEO PRODUCTION Sascha Conrad
Produced by Poetry Collective Landschaft.
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POETRY & VOCALS Ulrike Almut Sandig
MUSIC Grigory Semenchuk
EMGLISH TRANSLATION Karen Leeder
VIDEO PRODUCTION Beate Kunath & Eléonore Roedel
Produced by Poetry Collective Landschaft.
Grimm (poems)
Poems. 36 pages.
Translated by Karen Leeder.
Published by Hurst Street Press Oxford London 2018.
This cycle refers to The Children’s and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm, first published in two volumes in 1812 and 1815 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. It reanimates the dark side of Grimm and uses it as a backdrop for a very contemporary European concerns: war, migration, the rise of the Right.
Karen Leeder is a writer, critic and translator. She is Professor of Modern German Literature at New College, Oxford. In 2015 she was awarded the English PEN translation Pitch for her translation of Ulrike Almut Sandig’s poetry. Here’s to her website.
Thick of it
Poems. 80 pages. Published by Seagull Books Calcutta New York London 2018
Translated by Karen Leeder
Read the review on Asymptote (It’s worth scrolling down).
Order here.
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In Music
Beatz & Verses with Grigory Semenchuk.
Music CD. 45 minutes. Published Schöffling & Co Frankfurt am Main 2018.
Produced by Klangkosmonauten Berlin 2018.
Listen online.
More info on Landschaft.
Read this review from Oleksandr Kobalchuk (You will need Google translate)
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In Prose
Buch gegen das Verschwinden (Against Disappearance)
Stories. Published by Schöffling & Co. Frankfurt / M. 2015.
Peter Thompson’s sample translation of the story „About our Absence“.
Review in New Books in German
More info & press comments
Amid the unrest in Istanbul’s Gezi Park, a young journalist tries to cast off the expectations of his mother, who was bitten by the travel bug after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. A hiker gets lost in the ancient, enchanted forests of the Engadine during a snowstorm. A little girl is flown by her grandmother to the end of the world during the transit of Venus. Where their traces lead is one of the many puzzles of these stories.
In her colourful and poetic prose, Ulrike Almut Sandig describes places that only appear to be gone. In reality they live on in the experiences of the elderly and the hopes of the younger generation. Relationships are buffeted by the storms of these stories, and deceptive certainties come unravelled. In her new book, Ulrike Almut Sandig uses the magic of storytelling to prevent whole worlds disappearing from our consciousness.
A short film by Harald Opel based on this book:
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Flamingos
Stories. Published by Schöffling & Co. Frankfurt / M. 2010. Paperback by S. Fischer. Frankfurt / Main 2012.
Anthea Bell’s translation of the title story in Five Dials no26.
Susan Bernofsky’s sample translation of the story „Mutabor“.
In Poetry
I am a field full of oilseed rape I hide the deer and shine like 13 oil paintings piled one on top of the other
New Poems
Karen Leeder’s translation on pen.org PEN America 2016.
Karen Leeder’s translation in Middlebury New England Review, no. 03/2016.
Karen Leeder’s translations in the Tasmanian literary journal „Communion“, no. 03/2015.
Karen Leeder’s translations in Shearsman magazine, 102 & 102/2014.
A clip by her poetry band LANDSCHAFT, Kiev 2016:
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Thick of it
Poems. Published by Schöffling & Co. Frankfurt / M. 2011.
Karen Leeder’s translations the PEN America website, 2016.
Bradley Schmidt’s translation in no man’s land, no. 7/2012.
Karen Leeder’s translations in Modern Poetry in Translation, no. 03/2013.
Bradley Schmidt’s translations in New Books in German no.32.
Bradley Schmidt’s translations in Asymptote, Issue Jul 2013.
Karen Leeder’s translations in Asymptote blog, Jul 22, 2014.
Karen Leeder’s translations on Asymptote blog, Dec 16, 2014.
A short film by Harald Opel based on a poem from Thick of it:
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Streumen
Poems. Published by Connewitzer Verlagsbuchhandlung. Leipzig 2007.
Jane Gibian’s translations on Shampoo Poetry.
Bradley Schmidt’s translations on Lyrikline.org:
in summer the elderly sit
my heimat
on a sinking ship
fishing
russian woods
in july
was the table, was the chair
was sky
let it lie
Bradley Schmidt’s translation on no man’s land:
this draught from talk (issue 5/2010)
the russian woods (issue 6/2011)
A spoken word impro with Grigory Semenchuk based on a poem in this book, Kiev 2015:
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A poetryfilm by Harald Opel based on a poem in this book:
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Fuel
Poems. Published by Connewitzer Verlagsbuchhandlung. Leipzig 2005 / 2009.
In Music
In a Workshop
Translation Workshop at Queen’s College in Oxford (UK) for the literary magazine Modern poetry in Translation:
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In a Postbox
For further information on the author, bookings and to
aquire rights please contact the publishing house:
Schöffling & Co.
Kaiserstraße 79
D-60329 Frankfurt am Main
Kathrin Scheel
kathrin.scheel@schoeffling.de
phone: +49 69 92 07 87 16
fax: +49 69 92 07 87 20
