starve pray sob swim

Feeling exhausted, hurt, unstable, seeking help – these are some of the existential feelings and emotional struggles that Sirka Elspaß addresses in her new collection of poems. From everyday observations, such as “how often don’t worry about it / appears in the thread”, to the guardian angel who throws in the towel and is no longer reachable, “has even turned off his voicemail.” The gaze falls on the speaker’s own body, their own precarious existence, before turning to the outside world, to nature, to animals, especially to the birds in the sky. Lamentations and bright harmonies, ranting and laughter alternate, while the search for comfort hovers above it all: “I am always looking for them / the angels / comfort via messenger.”

Sirka Elspaß’s search for comfort is precisely that: comforting. Despite all the vulnerability and pain, her poetry feels weightless. Helping us to overcome the painful points of being-in-the-world. Because starve pray sob swim shows us that life goes on, that we are not alone – and sometimes all it takes is one small moment, a humorous observation, a conciliatory verse.
 

»Melancholy and wit – Sirka Elspaß pulls off both.« Ella Rendtorff, DIE ZEIT

»Original, sometimes genuinely funny, in her second anthology, the author balances resignation and self-deprecation, the earnestness and comedy of human existence. Starve pray sob swim carries on where Sirka Elspaß left off in her debut: here we have an author on our hands who perceives, thinks, and speaks in the language of poetry.« Beate Tröger, SWR Kultur

»[Elspaß shows her] wide-ranging lust for experimentation … [starve pray sob swim is] wrought in a wonderfully consistent fashion.« Christian Metz, Deutschlandfunk

»Sirka Elspaß’s brilliant poetry collection starve pray sob swim can help us to better understand the present.« Erwin Uhrmann, Die Presse, Spectrum

»The poems of Sirka Elspaß are full of vulnerability and compellingly consoling.« Friederike Schilbach, Harper's Bazaar

»Sirka Elspaß manages to twirl the four activities of starving, praying, sobbing and swimming so intricately that they become a kind of existential thread. … There is no better way of putting the complex struggle for survival in poetic language.« Alexandru Bulucz, Buchkultur