Collected Poems

2004–2021
Edited and with an afterword by Marcel Beyer
Suhrkamp | Insel

Collected Poems / Gesammelte Gedichte
2004–2021
Edited and with an afterword by Marcel Beyer
Friederike Mayröcker’s late poetic oeuvre gathered together in a single volume
When Friederike Mayröcker celebrated her 80th birthday in 2004 and her Collected Poems 1939–2003 appeared, she made the decision to go off in an entirely new direction. Gradually, this line developed into a form of its own, which she dubbed the »proem« – encompassing lyrical illumination and clear-eyed observations of the world, shifting between short prose and poem. She made it her declared objective to stave off death, her bitter rival, through the practice of writing. Friederike...
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When Friederike Mayröcker celebrated her 80th birthday in 2004 and her Collected Poems 1939–2003 appeared, she made the decision to go off in an entirely new direction. Gradually, this line developed into a form of its own, which she dubbed the »proem« – encompassing lyrical illumination and clear-eyed observations of the world, shifting between short prose and poem. She made it her declared objective to stave off death, her bitter rival, through the practice of writing. Friederike Mayröcker did this with breathtaking productivity and an overabundance of colour, conjuring up her love for life: in reminiscences of her eventful childhood in the Vienna of the twenties and thirties, of her years beside the poet Ernst Jandl, of countless encounters with people, artworks, and music. She followed the changing of the seasons more attentively than ever, and with her linguistic force, was able to turn a flower on the windowsill into the centre of the universe.

Friederike Mayröcker was one of the great poets of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Time and again, she was discussed as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. On 4 June 2021, Mayröcker passed away in her home town of Vienna, at the age of 96. This volume picks up where the Collected Poems 1939–2003 (2004) left off, gathering together Friederike Mayröckers late poetic work all the way through to her final proem, which was written in 2021.
»A poetic revelation.« Richard Kämmerlings, WELT AM SONNTAG

»In these texts, images made entirely of language flash up at us…« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»The poetry and prose of this once-in-a-century author are fascinating…« Gerrit Bartels, Der Tagesspiegel

»The grand dame of the Austrian avant-garde, who elevated poetry to a life principle with a radicality that is perhaps unmatched by any other poet of our time.« Gunter Kaindlstorfer, Deutschlandfunk

»One longs to be loved the way Friederike Mayröcker loves the world, full of a lust for language and devotion.« Jorg Magenau, SZ
»A poetic revelation.« Richard Kämmerlings, WELT AM SONNTAG

»In these texts, images made entirely of language flash up at us…« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»The poetry and prose of this once-in-a-century author are fascinating…« Gerrit Bartels, Der Tagesspiegel

»The grand dame of the Austrian avant-garde, who elevated poetry to a life principle with a radicality that is perhaps unmatched by any other poet of our time.« Gunter...
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2024, 560 pages
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Friederike Mayröcker was born in 1924 in Vienna, where she died in 2021. From 1946 to 1969 she taught English at various secondary schools in Vienna. Her first literary works date back to 1939. She began publishing poems in journals in 1946, her first book was published in 1956. She wrote poetry, prose, plays, radio plays and children's books and was honoured with numerous distinguished national and international literary awards.

Friederike Mayröcker was born in 1924 in Vienna, where she died in 2021. From 1946 to 1969 she taught English at various secondary schools in...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Airy-Fairy
Year of Publication: 2024
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2024
Airy-Fairy: A Confused Book. That was the title of the first volume of poetry by the great Austrian poet, Friederike Mayröcker, who passed away in 2021, just three years before her 100th birthday. The first milestone in one of the great oeuvres in Austrian letters.

The collection shares its title with the brief text that closes out the book. In comic artist Nicolas Mahler’s...
Demon Removal Service
Year of Publication: 2020
Marcel BeyerYear of Publication: 2020

There is a performance at the trashy theatre. Hildegard Knef gets in a car. Rudolph Moshammer carries his Yorkshire Terrier around Munich. S. T. Coleridge makes a joke about Cologne. Works of art...

Rights sold to:

Kurdish rights (tîr-verlag)

as mornings and mossgreen I. Step to the window
Year of Publication: 2020
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2020

»Esteemed listeners, do not try to lift the secret of this text«, orders Friederike Mayröcker in her new work of prose – but even its title leaves an infallible...

Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Denmark (Palomar)
Jimi
Year of Publication: 2020

»Jimi the Polar Bear was lying in the arms of the sleeping child, his paws crossed. It was 1 very young polar pear the size of a puppy and he hardly dared to breathe so as not to wake the child. The child was dreaming that Jimi was lying in its arms and told him 1 story.«


Thus begins the short poetic story of Jimi the Polar Bear and the child Emma, told by the great Austrian poet...

Pathos and Swallow
Year of Publication: 2018
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2018
Friederike Mayröcker had to spend the summer months of 2015 in hospital. For weeks she is cut off from her writing cave, the legendary paper enclosure of her poetic work. Writing in the strange,...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Denmark (Arena), Sweden (Ellerstöms)

The Century that Cried itself Blind
Year of Publication: 2017
Marcel BeyerYear of Publication: 2017

Considering this current moment of great change as well as the 20th century when death became a master from Germany, is literature still possible? Does it still have a reason for being in a post-Auschwitz world where all cultural production can only be an expression of barbarism? Or is literature necessary, indeed indispensible, precisely because of such atrocities? Which methods must such a...

fleurs
Year of Publication: 2016
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2016

fleurs – the flowers, the flower petals, they give this book its title, make us think of spring, of mild air and gently flowing ribbons. But if you let yourself be lured onto that...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull)

cahier
Year of Publication: 2014
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2014

Friederike Mayröcker doesn’t have time. Neither for résumé and memory, nor for extensive observations and reasoning and certainly not for storytelling. She doesn’t even have time for life itself...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull)

études
Year of Publication: 2013
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2013

Études is what Friederike Mayröcker calls her prose poetry and lyrical prose pieces, studies then, or »shreddings«, as she says, splintering, brittle and highly concentrated; the language...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull)

The Karnau Tapes
Year of Publication: 2013
Ulli Lust, Marcel BeyerYear of Publication: 2013
Since his brilliant and harrowing novel The Karnau Tapes came out in 1995, Marcel Beyer has been considered »one of Europe’s best young novelists« (The New...
Rights sold to:

English World Rights (New York Review of Books), France (Ça et La), Netherlands (Scratch Books), Slovak Republic (Brak)

Putin’s Postbox
Year of Publication: 2012
Marcel BeyerYear of Publication: 2012
This collection of unpublished stories and vignettes by Marcel Beyer is a book about perception, style, listening, and writing.


One morning, Marcel Beyer drives out to the...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Voland & Quist)

just sitting around here GRUESOMELY now
Year of Publication: 2012
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2012
It is summer in this book, even if nature often does not hold to summer. The flowers either have tiny buds or have long since withered. It is summer in the book, asserts Mayröcker’s work, because the...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), France (Atelier de l'Agneau), Denmark (Palomar)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Bulgaria (Ergo)

Scardanelli
Year of Publication: 2009
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2009

Rights sold to:

USA (The Song Cave), Spain (Ediciones de Aqui), France (Atelier de l'Agneau)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Sweden (Ellerströms), Hungary (Pluralica)

Kaltenburg
Year of Publication: 2008
Marcel BeyerYear of Publication: 2008
Marcel Beyer has written a grand new novel, a panorama spanning German history from the 1930s up to the present. Like in his successful Flughunde (The Karnau Tapes), ...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Harcourt), Spanish world rights (Edhasa), Chinese simplex rights (People’s Literature Publishing House), Arabic world rights (Kalima), France (Métailié), Italy (Einaudi), Netherlands (Cossée), Sweden (Bonniers), Norway (Pax), Czech Republic (Havran), Hungary (Magvetö), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Geopoetika), Turkey (Ayrinti)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Lindhardt & Ringhof / Saga Egmont)

And I Shook Myself a Beloved
Year of Publication: 2005
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 2005
Spiegel Online: »Have you ever considered writing, rather straightforwardly and at length, about your relationship with Ernst ...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (A Public Space), Czech Republic (Dybbuk)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Sweden (Ellerströms)

brütt
Year of Publication: 1998
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 1998

»brütt«. To Friederike Mayröcker a symbol of pain and hardship, of the cold and of grief, were it not for the »sighing gardens« that lend a soft counterbalance to the stirrings of love...

Rights sold to:

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Northwestern UP), France (Atelier de l'Agneau)

The Karnau Tapes
Year of Publication: 1995
Marcel BeyerYear of Publication: 1995

World War II. The final days of the Third Reich. Hermann Karnau, a sound engineer, is obsessively compiling an archive of every conceivable nuance of human sound. Karnau's work so impresses...

Rights sold to:

USA (Harcourt), UK (Secker and Warburg), Spanish world rights (Debate), Russia (Amphora), France (Calmann-Lévy), Italy (Einaudi), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Bonniers), Korea (Hyonamsa), Japan (Sanshusha), Poland (Słowo / Obraz Terytoria), Slovakia (Slovensky Spisovatel), Bulgaria (Balkani), Estonia (Tänapäev), Serbia (Geopoetika), Turkey (Ayrinti), Israel (Books in the Attic)

The Heart-Wrenching Nature of Things
Year of Publication: 1990
Friederike MayröckerYear of Publication: 1990
The book is the continuation of a kind of biography that began with Night Train; the continuation of a merciless enchantment.
Rights sold to:

France (Atelier de l’Agneau)


DISCOVER

News
On 20 December 2024, the Austrian author would have celebrated her 100th birthday.