(1935- ) poet, short-story writer
Sarah Kirsch was born in Limlingerode, a village in the Harz Mountains. Her father worked in telecommunications for the East German government. Kirsch became a socialist at a young age. She earned a diploma in biology from the University of Halle and attended the Johannes R. Becher Institute for Literature in Leipzig from 1963 to 1965. Participating in the East German effort to build solidarity between workers and writers, Kirsch worked in factories and collective farms during the 1960s. She married the writer Rainer Kirsch in 1958.
Kirsch’s first publication was a radio play for children that she cowrote with her husband in 1963. They also collaborated on her first poetry collection, Gesprach mit dem Saurier (Conversation with a Dinosaur, 1965), a volume of children’s poems with a political edge. Her poems in Lan-daufenthalt (A Stay in the Country, 1967) combine descriptions of nature with political commentary. In the late 1960s, Kirsch defended the value of lyric poetry in the socialist state. Although her stand drew government criticism, the debate started a “lyric boom” among poets. In 1976, she protested when East Germany revoked the citizenship of the singer Wolf Biermann. As a result, she lost her membership in the Communist Party and moved to West Berlin.
Kirsch is known for her unique style that combines musicality and facility of language. She used intense nature images to describe human experiences and to bridge the gap between love poetry and the poetry of social production. She was especially concerned about the role of women in modern society in both private and public realms. Kirsch’s influences include Bettina von arnim and the Russian poet Anna akhmatova. Despite her political difficulties, Kirsch won numerous awards for her poetry and short-story collections in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Friedrich Holder-lin Prize.
Another Work by Sarah Kirsch
The Panther Woman: Five Tales from the Cassette Recorder. Translated by Marion Faber. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
A Work about Sarah Kirsch
Hopwood, Mererid, and David Basker, eds. Sarah Kirsch. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997.
