Durs Grünbein was born in Dresden in 1962, and now lives in Berlin and Rome. Since 2005, he has been a professor of poetics and aesthetics at the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf. One of Germany’s most celebrated poets, Grünbein has earned the Georg Büchner Prize, the Friedrich Nietzsche Prize, the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, the Berlin Literature Prize, the Premio Internazionale di Poesia Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Tranströmer Prize, and, most recently, the Zbigniew Herbert Prize. His poetry and prose have been translated into multiple languages, including Russian, Italian, English, French, Spanish, Swedish, and Japanese. His book Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems, translated by Michael Hoffmann, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2006. Several of his works, including Childhood in the Diorama, The Doctrine of Photography, and Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of My City, have won awards in Karen Leeder’s English translations.
- 2025
- 2006
Judges’ Citation
Born in Dresden, a ‘deathtrap for angels’, Durs Grünbein is the most significant poet to have emerged from the old East.
Selected poems
by Durs Grünbein
9
Now listen to this: in the obituary they wrote about me
In my lifetime, they said I was so sweet-natured
That they wanted to keep me as a pet.
It makes me ill to hear them drooling
About my loyalty, my affection, my trustworthiness around children.
Tripe! There’s a term for everything alien.
Looks as though time has caught up with me.
And my voice is swimming in the confession:
“I was half zombie, half enfant perdu …”
Perhaps eventually space gulped me down
Where the horizon closes up.
My double can look after me from here on in.
My orneriness is puked out, plus the question:
Do pets have lighter brains?
Copyright © 2005 by Durs Grunbein / Translation and preface 2005 by Michael Hofmann
from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Border Dog (Not Collie)
the German written by Durs Grünbein
- Rosie Goldsmith talks to Durs Grünbein The Riveting Interviews
- Poetry Foundation Profile
- Interview in The Berliner