Urs Allemann

Urs Allemann Poems

Urs Allemann Biography

Urs Allemann (born 1 April 1948) is a Swiss writer and journalist. Allemann was born in 1948 in Schlieren, near Zurich, but grew up in Bonn and Berlin. He studied German and English at the University of Marburg and sociology and social psychology at the University of Hanover. From 1975 to 1976 he was editor of the magazine Theater heute. From 1986 to 2005 he was literary editor on the arts section of the Basler Zeitung newspaper in Basel. His work has won several awards, including the Heimrad Bäcker Prize and the Swiss Literature Prize. He is known for his experimental prose style and has courted controversy in the past: his 1992 novel Babyfucker caused a minor scandal when it was presented in a literary competition (where despite protests from some of the judges, it went on to win the second-place Prize of Carinthia).)

The Best Poem Of Urs Allemann

For the Lyre

The hand that climbs into your breast your heart
to tear out falls off. It is yours. You bend over
to pick it up. Now your heart falls out. We fling
ourselves to the ground to hit into what’s ours the hearts
the hands the teeth. To jerk it down. Now you’re
falling your head has slid from your shoulders and converts
in rising flight up from inside to out as can’t be
imagined but told eyes. Even blood some think
flowed now. Weeping a ways away. Patient
the strewn all around the bones of others
sound. If by chance Orpheus came by
I’d sing him something shove the
meat-eating lyre her part of
what like, fell after.

Tranlated by Ann Cotten

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