I first encountered Raoul Schrott’s poetry at the Poetry School course run by Karen Leeder. Apart from being a writer and a poet, he is also a researcher and an explorer. As a result, he often brings science and poetry together. His poems have been translated by various translators into English, but no book in English has appeared so far.
MISE EN ABYME there is a terrace in a village on a cliff where lovers sit on benches hand in hand and such a vista opens up before them spread over land and sea they might think that it belongs to them but if one peers into the depths it is as if this other pull catches one in its breathless dread just as it is when love lulls one into complacency: one forgets the void right beneath one’s feet so I lie watching you, ma chère, in this hotel bed here on the market square you dressed in almost nothing on the balcony feeding pigeons on the street with sunflower seeds then you turn back to me once more thinking there is nothing left could wreck me to the core
trentinara 17. 6. 22
EVA FROM THE NORTH midday and winter across this flat land the light slow and straight · not scattered with leaves: trees razor-sharp · monotonous grey fields and the hard outlines of the houses as if held there one by one against the sky that vanishes at the edge with the dissolving sun · this is what i know of her: face and shoulder on a few photos · the voice on the phone what we say about other people · never the same but for the names · everything attracts but is not yet one or at home · at peace only the day as far as it reaches · the distance to her air bright as her skin so one can almost taste it like the mistletoe berries freckles
buxtehude 28. 1. 17
By Raoul Schrott
Translated by Karen Leeder
From Inventur des Sommers (‘Inventory of Summer’)
by Raoul Schrott
Published by Hanser (2023)
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Raoul Schrott is one of Austria’s most successful writers: a polymath, translator from ancient languages, poet, novelist, dramatist, polemicist, academic, critic, and explorer. His most recent works include his 800-page epic poem Erste Erde (‘First Earth’, 2016) and the baroque travel novel Eine Geschichte des Windes (‘A History of the Wind’, 2019).
Karen Leeder is a writer and Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. She is a prizewinning translator of contemporary German literature, including Evelyn Schlag, Raoul Schrott, Michael Krüger, Durs Grünbein, Volker Braun and Ulrike Almut Sandig, and has been awarded residences in the UK and Germany.