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Heroines from Abroad

Christine Marendon

Translated by Ken Cockburn

Heroines from Abroad
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Categories: 21st Century, German, Translation, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (112 pages)
(Pub. Jul 2018)
9781784106300
£12.99 £11.69
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(Pub. Jul 2018)
9781784106317
£10.39 £9.35
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Shortlisted for The 2019 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for Translation

    Heroines from Abroad
    introduces a vibrant new voice to the English language. Christine Marendon’s enigmatic, meditative poems, translated here from the German and collected for the first time, draw on dreams, fairy tales and childhood memories to tap into a world beyond conscious reach.

    Marendon’s poems do not present ideas so much as embody states of mind. Something is realised through the poem, rather than said within it. Here, the voice is more important than the particularities of what is said – language, not words.

    For the translator, Heroines from Abroad is the fruit of seven years’ steady work. The poems’ clarity and subtle force, the ‘crystalline, precise quality of their lyricism’ (Sasha Dugdale), are testament to that humble, unhurried collaboration in words.
    Christine Marendon
    Christine Marendon (1964–) grew up bilingual (German and Italian), studied Italian in Erlangen and Siena, and graduated in 1999 with a thesis on Italian women writers in the nineteenth century. After working as a translator and publicist for some years in her native Bavaria, she now lives in Hamburg where she ... read more
    Ken Cockburn
    Ken Cockburn (1960–) is a poet and translator based in Edinburgh, where he worked for many years at the Scottish Poetry Library. He was the first writer-in-residence at the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland, and was awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship for Literary Translation 2008. A selection of his ... read more
    Awards won by Ken Cockburn Short-listed, 2019 The Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for Translation
    (Heroines from Abroad)
     'Her poems are serious, probing (sometimes delicately, sometimes more aggressively) and linguistically exciting.'
    Dilys Wood, Artemis Poetry
        'The feeling that overcomes you when reading the poems is numinous; they take you out of your home… make you distinctly aware of your place on the planet.'
    Chloe Vaughan, The Manchester Review
    'At times elusive, but built around moments and strong images, Heroines from Abroad is most concerned with reflecting this state of the self being a part of nature and trying to write the natural world, whilst simultaneously feeling cut off from it.'
    Chrissy Williams, Modern Poetry in Translation
     '...this collection considers the liminal spaces of dreams, of poetry, of fairy tales, of the subconscious, of our relationships to the planet and its beings...It is a compelling collection, one that readers will return to and will return to readers in dreams and contemplation.'
    Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, World Literature Today
       'With a distinctively female voice, there is indeed a dreamy, Dali-esque quality, where apparently unconnected images circle around each other and leave the reader to make connections, to recognise something deep inside themselves.'
    Tamsin Writing review of book launch
    'Marendon's work may bridge for English-language readers the perceived chasm between avant-garde and mainstream poetry. It's not obscure, it's not banally 'accessible'. The voice and the language of Cockburn's translations feels freshly rinsed.'
    Carol Rumens
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