These Numbered Days

»With Brecht, Benn, Bobrowski and Celan, Peter Huchel is one of a handful of essential post-war poets in the German language. A precise observer of natural phenomena, Huchel is above all a realist whose metaphors take us deep into the social and historical landscape, into zones of devastation and despair, the zero-hour of isolation. His world is devoid of illusion or sentimentality; there is no redemption, at most an exactitude that is itself a confirmation of what is human and real. Lifted out of the schismatic currents of the Cold War era by Martyn Crucefix’s supple and arrestingly sensual translations, Huchel surprises us as a fresh and startling voice for our own numbered days.« Iain Galbraith

»Remember me, whispers the dust… The visionary landscapes of Peter Huchel, one of the foremost German language poets of the post-war period, had already been ably translated by the likes of Hamburger and Firmage, but these beautifully nuanced versions by Martyn Crucefix serve to reawaken Huchel as a prime European voice mournfully shaped by a swiftly receding past, the gentle signalling of an irretrievable loss which seems pressingly relevant to our supremely alienated epoch.« Will Stone