

Ernst Meister Lyric Award for Emerging Talent
Mirko Bonné
The Republic of Silver Fish
poetry
112pp (8,600 words)
Mirko Bonné’s new poems describe a time in which nothing remained as it was: A house, a garden, a whole landscape dissolve before the reader’s eyes, just like the love, which once held them together.
There are poems about time, transitoriness, being a child and growing older. Poems about places, from Hamburg to Ireland and South America by way of Saint Petersburg, Berlin, Prague and Vienna and finally the southernmost post office in the world, in Antarctica.
»Mirko Bonné’s poems have staying power. (...) They are the poems of a story-teller, who is also a great reader. Each poem an embryonic story, almost every one a document of life.«
Felix Philipp Ingold
Reviews
»Where else has the sensuousness of the German poem ever been so lavishly celebrated as in Bonné’s DIE REPUBLIK DER SILBERFISCHE? (...) A great deal of life and experience have gone into this book.«
DIE WELT
»Bonné opens up a poetric microcosm under the surface of our daily routine, shifting and translating reality and allowing us to take a fresh view on human habits and gestures. (...) Bonnés poems are all about life.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Melancholic, full of longing and above all, unpretentious and thoroughly well-written – that’s DIE REPUBLIK DER SILBERFISCHE. Mirko Bonné has composed a volume of outstanding poetry that prove his rank as one of the most important voices in contemporary literature.«
Tiroler Tageszeitung
»With rare thoughtfulness and an almost existentialist seriousness, Bonné’s books enter into the basic questions of life such as fidelita and betrayal, self-image and failure. Bonné’s great literary talent reveals itself as he translates these issues into texts that are marked by stylistic ease and plasticity.«
Marie-Luise Kaschnitz Award, the Jury