Grimmelshausen Award for Emerging Talent

George Konell Prize

Silke Scheuermann – Winter Has Come Overnight

poetry

96pp

» About the author

Silke Scheuermann’s writing is fantastical, surreal – poems about transformation.
Her recent love poetry shows the lover turning into a wonderful phenomenon – or not. Everything seems so easy, so self-evident, that it’s as if winter had come overnight.


»Silke Scheuermann’s poems captivate with an original tone. They show her power of observation and association, while the melancholia underlying her verses is frequently broken by ironic lineation. Several of her poems are complete narratives in themselves. Her prose is equally convincing and of an astonishing visual power that needs few words to strike up a most convincing contemporary setting that is not a trendy lifestyle report, but always an artistic close-up of our present.«
George Konell Prize, the Jury

»Silke Scheuermann masters the high art of contemporary writing, capturing the particular climate, that special flavour of the present in her prose as well as in her poetry, making it more tangible and perceivable than in our daily routine.
Silke Scheuermann is an original poet, a ravishingly sensual narrator writing a lean, clearly structured, gently ironical and lively prose. Over and above, Silke Scheuermann is a highly intelligent and gifted author and a keen observer of her time and contemporaries.«
George Konell Prize, laudatio by Uwe Wittstock

Reviews

»Silke Scheuermann is a chronicler of emotions. Her poems tell stories so simple and – seemingly – concrete, approaching the mystery that is life so directly while in fact leading us on a detour.«
Die ZEIT

»The vibrant colours of the world are carved into and entwined with Silke Scheuermann’s verse. (...) Scheuermann is a daring poet, her writing keen yet tender. Theodor W. Adorno once stated that the best poems are those that strike lucky at the pivotal point. If this is true, then those who write poems have to trust to chance. Congratulations, Silke Scheuermann, for the courage to do so, for such bliss of language.«
Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»Her poetry unfolds into a rhythmical flow of words, a nonpareil melody of language.«
Literarische Welt

»Silke Scheuermann has broken up the antagonism of magic and practicality. She invents a world formula that teaches us how to be unhappy - without losing our sanity.«
Deutschlandradio

»Well worth reading.(...) Silke Scheuermann understands the hypnotic power of poetry.«
Frankfurter Neue Presse

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