LUDWIG STEINHERR was born in Munich in 1962, where he still lives, and studied philosophy at the University of Munich (writing an M.A. thesis on Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik and a much-noted doctorate on Hegel and Quine, “Holismus, Existenz und Identität”. Ein systematischer Vergleich zwischen Quine und Hegel). He is now a free-lance writer and lecturer in philosophy at the University of Eichstätt. Steinherr has worked as an essayist, a reviewer, a juror, a translator (of Michael Hamburger, for example), and as an editor, co-founding the influential journal Das Gedicht (The Poem) with Anton G. Leitner in 1993. But it is as a poet that he has written his way into the front rank of contemporary German writers, one milestone here being the selection of his poem Legend (Sage) as “Gedicht des Jahres” (‘Poem of the Year’) by the Autoreninitiative Köln in 1987. The present selection is based on the nine collections published in the twenty years following his early debut, Fluganweisung, in 1985; since thten, he has published two further books of poetry:Von Stirn zu Gestirn(Munich: Lyrikedition, 2000, 2007) and Kometenjagd (Munich: Lyrikedition, 2000, 2009). Steinherr’s poems have also been published widely in magazines and anthologies in Germany and abroad (in Raymond Hargreaves’ Young Poets of Germany, Forest Books 1994, for instance, or in the 1994 Agenda German Issue edited by Michael Hamburger and Richard Dove), have received a number of awards – including the Leonce-und- Lena-Förderpreis (1993), the Buchpreis des Verbandes Evangelischer Büchereien (1999) and the Hermann-Hesse- Förderpreis (1999) – and have been translated into various languages, including French and Czech. Steinherr was elected a fellow of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts) in 2003.
AGAIN AND AGAIN…
Again and again
there’s the
apple the
hand that keeps
reaching out
there’s the
look
the bite
the naked
knowledge
Again and again
we’re
expelled
from a garden
that never
THE INNOCENCE OF STONE
In stone too
a source is flowing
a tree is sleeping
the possibility of life throbs
already the thought is lurking
which knocks stones into shape
which seeks out sources
uproots trees
makes life
impossible to live.
STUCCO
What’s coming into being there
light from light
what’s growing forth
out of church-ceilings monastery-walls
acanthus tendrils sea-shells blossoms
and angels’ faces
secret recipes concocted
over long winters
lime water beer hibiscus root
animal bristles and curdled milk
stirred into the plaster
what’s coming into being there
lying down in draughts
coughs rheumatism dropsy
what’s growing forth
light from light
and how it begins
at night sleepless covered in sweat
in between nightmares
and dawn’s dank fingers
the way it appears
from out of the ceiling
trumpets of light
in the midst of darkness.
-Translated by Richard Dove.
*Copyright by ARC PUBLICATIOS, Todmorden, UK, 2010.
