Hôtel des Étrangers. Poems

In this new volume of poems Joachim Sartorius remains faithful to his main themes. These are sensuality and transitoriness, physical love and its older brother, death. Thus, this collection of poems culminates in a danse macabre, in a frantic journey into the realm of the dead. Many of the new poems deal with real or imaginary pictures and sing hymns on the visionary power of painting. The orient is again present. The »cities of the East« are foreign places, border crossings to intimate topographies; they lead into a hazardous, exquisite area of metaphors. The journeys, the painfully intense memory and the meditation at his ‹workplace› are to Joachim Sartorius all a complex expression for writing and they give answers to the question obstinately asked by him concerning nature of the special place which the poem offers.

Contact Foreign Rights
Rights sold to

France: Editions Bélin (rights reverted) / Poland: a5 (selection) / USA (World English): FMSBW Press

  • Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
  • Release: 25.08.2008
  • ISBN: 978-3-462-04032-6
  • 80 Pages
  • Author: Joachim Sartorius
Hôtel des Étrangers. Poems
Joachim Sartorius Hôtel des Étrangers. Poems
Bild von Joachim Sartorius
Joachim Sartorius

Joachim Sartorius , born in Fürth in 1946, grew up in Tunis and now lives in Berlin and Syracuse (Italy). He is a poet and translator of American poetry, in particular of the work of John Ashbery and Wallace Stevens. He has published six volumes of poetry (most recently Hôtel des Étrangers , 2008), numerous books co-created with visual artists, and the travel stories Die Prinzeninseln (2009), Mein Zypern (2013) and Städte des Ostens (2015). His poetry has been translated to fourteen languages. He is the editor of volumes by Malcolm Lowry and William Carlos Williams as well as of the anthologies Atlas der neuen Poesie (1995), Minima Poetica (1999), Alexandria Fata Morgana (2001) and Niemals eine Atempause . Handbuch der politischen Poesie im 20. Jahrhundert (2014). He is a member of PEN and of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Literature).

Further Titles

Show all