Translated from German by various hands. English texts only.
Published March 2025. Paperback, 208pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $23
ISBN 9781848619074

The Opposite of Seduction is the first anthology of contemporary German-language poetry published in the UK for more than 40 years, and thus fills a very important gap. The last such book in the USA was almost 30 years ago. The reason why the anthology is timely is that the last twenty or so years have been a period of great vitality for the German-language lyric, much of the excitement of which has passed English-speaking countries by, for want of translations, and particularly for want of a selection of translated works gathered in one place.

The selection here was in one sense guided by the desire to present a genealogy of German poetry starting with three senior writers: Elke Erb, Thomas Kling and Friederike Mayröcker. These three poets—two German (one West, one East) and one Austrian, and in themselves also quite different—have had an enduring influence on German-language poetry which manifests in strange and sometimes surprising ways, such that it is hard to pin down precisely what a poem influenced by Erb, Kling, or Mayröcker may look like. A kind of stripped-back collage-form; an interest in language itself, and in the fact of the poem; a poetics which is at once both sparse and generous, which blends material and abstract, and which is ultimately often playful in effect: these are some of the hallmarks of the strands of contemporary German poetry represented here, and which reveal the multiple and overlapping legacies of these three late twentieth-century giants, samples of whose work is also included.

The translators are: Shane Anderson, Kurt Beals, Paul-Henri Campbell, Aimee Chor, Ann Cotten, Brian Currid, Andrew Duncan, Joshua Daniel Edwin, Christopher Fenwick, Gerald Fiebig, Iain Galbraith, Robert Gillett, Nicholas Grindell, Catherine Hales, Christian Hawkey, Jayashree Hari Joshi, Alexander Kappe, Karen Leeder, Greg Nissan, Kerstin Preiwuß, Caroline Reul, Bradley Schmidt, Jake Schneider, Joel Scott, Sophie Seita, Donna Stonecipher, Nicola Thomas, Amy Visram and Jana Maria Weiß.

Also available from these retailers: