Impressum: Langsames Licht is a volume divided into several sections with around 90 shorter and longer poems, some in several parts, which exemplify the themes and poetic processes of Ilma Rakusas entire œuvre.
The small movements of memory, the sensitive registration of passing time, the precise gaze: this gives rise to a different, unusual beauty in these poems, which combine classical topoi (nature, transience, longing) with the most topical social issues in a natural way.
Rakusas place is the whole world, but preferably the former East of Europe. She is an observer, a contemporary who copes with the unexpected sights in the familiar and everyday as well as in the unknown with the methods of modernism. And with an incredibly highly musical language that – despite the short cuts and quick associations – never strays too far from everyday language and thus compresses it to an amazing density.
Sold to:
Serbian (Treći Trg)
Slovenian (Beletrina)
Spanish (Alquimia)
»Rakusa topographizes European history in beautiful miniatures and with impressionistic elegance.« (Michael Braun, Tagesspiegel)
»Rakusa’s poems are characterized by an artistic balance of pathos and casualness. This is the tone of the present, this is how life sounds today.« (Franz Schuh, WDR5)
»We follow the poet on her long journeys through languages, continents and cultures. Ilma Rakusa’s poems are a work of remembrance and visualization. They discover the miraculous in the everyday.« (Manfred Papst, NZZ am Sonntag)
In Rakusa’s poems, »the power of imagery, the pleasure of language and self-reflection interpenetrate in a wondrous way.« (Nico Bleutge, Südeutsche Zeitung)