Word for Word

Since the 1960s, the English poet Matthew Mead and his German wife Ruth have translated selections from poets to whom they were drawn. This is their own choice from the many memorable poems which they have translated. The collection celebrates a fascinating era of German poetry, to which it forms a uniquely personal introduction. Matthew Mead once wrote: ‘Of the Germans, Gottfried Benn has said many things to their end, but the important poem by a contemporary is, for me, Sabais’ “Generation”‘. This poem confronts Germany’s post-war experience in a way no other German writer has matched. Together with the mysterious, almost spell-like poetry of Johannes Bobrowski, it is one of the highlights of this varied collection, which ranges from the lyrical to the satirical, the witty and sardonic to the surrealist, and the elegiac in Nelly Sachs, a Nobel Prizewinner.