Young poets of Germany

Like the language itself, there persists a notional unity of literature written in German, despite political boundaries and ideological differences. The twenty-seven poets featured in this anthology, born between 1952 and 1962, include eighteen from the Federal Republic, seven from the former G.D.R., one from Switzerland and one from Austria. Wry, laconic, full of a sense of loss or deprivation, these diverse and dissenting voices are characterised by a feeling of displacement and dislocation. Though there was a wall between East and West German literature on the eastern side, where only a limited amount of West German writing was available, on the western side there was a market for East German literature and it has long been the practice in the West to include East German writing in anthologies of contemporary German literature. This anthology presents a kind of photo-finish around the time of unification.