SCHWITTERS, Kurt
Norway Poems And Three From England

Poems by Kurt Schwitters. Translated from German, Norwegian, sneezes, coughs, and English by Damion Searls.

“Kurt Schwitters was one of the great avant-garde artists of the twentieth century. A collagist of physical and linguistic detritus, he invented his own brand of Dada. Ever a child at play, he saw the nonsense of common sense, and built his poems from the sights and sounds of ordinary language combined in extraordinary ways. In my library, he stands alongside Gertrude Stein and the Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms. Damion Searls has selected and wonderfully translated some poems Schwitters composed in Norway, where he fled from the Nazis. Searls also includes (and playfully translates into German) three of Schwitters’s translingual experiments—pieces composed in the UK after escaping the Nazis again, in his unabashedly imperfect learner’s English. What a beauty this book is!” — Eugene Ostashevsky

[publishers' note]

Published by Staircase Books, 2025
Poetry