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Nottingham, 26 February 2015

The voices of Ulrike Sandig and Karen Leeder resonated with each other in a reading that combined material from Sandig’s poetry anthologies Streumen and Dickicht, unpublished work and the prose collection Buch gegen das Verschwinden (2015).

Ulrike Almut Sandig, was born in the former GDR and now lives in Berlin. She began by pasting poems on to lampposts in Leipzig, and on flyers and on postcards, which were given away free. To date she has published three volumes of poetry (Zunder [2005], Streumen [2007], Dickicht [2011]) and two prose volumes (Flamingos [2010], Buch gegen das Verschwinden [2015]). Other publications include radio plays and audiobooks of poetry and pop music.

Sandig and Leeder (Photo Bartel)
​ Ulrike Almut Sandig and Karen Leeder (© H. Bartel) ​

Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German Literature and Fellow/Tutor at New College, Oxford. She has published widely, both on modern German culture and literature, especially poetry. A poet in her own right and prize-winning translator of contemporary German poetry into English, Karen Leeder is currently the TORCH Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the Southbank Centre, London.

A collection of essays and translations arising out of this Encounter has been published as Ulrike Almut Sandig: Prose, Poetry and Performance, ed. Heike Bartel and Nicola Thomas (Oxford German Studies, 47.3, 2018). 

This event was sponsored by the Keith Spalding Bequest