Crusade with a Dog

In her new volume of poetry, Nora Bossong travels from small-town Germany to the Mediterranean and onwards into the Holy Land and beyond. Her natural manner of movement a shifting back and forth in time. Hungry for experience, she explores poetic scenes from a past hundred of years old and a distilled present. Almost as if by chance, she directs her lens on people, places and traditions, describing them with subtle humour and sensitivity while leaving their secrets intact.

Whoever has had the chance to hear Bossong’s poems set to music by the composer Anno Schreier, will know what an important voice of German-language literature contemporary writing has been graced with. It is time that other countries got to know it now, too.

»Poetry means the metamorphosis of speech, sometimes even salvation. Bossong’s masterful poems lead us through troubling times, without letting us fall.« Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag

»Poetry is not a good means of reassuring the world, good poetry keeps the world suspended so that it can be weighed anew. For such a show of strength, however, ›light feathers‹ are required. Nora Bossong has them.« Tobias Lehmkuhl, DIE ZEIT

»Astonishing powers of observation and an immense talent for writing.« FAZ

»Nora Bossong is a poet who understands transitions. She has written a linguistically powerful and political collection of poems, without attaching herself to a political agenda in the process.« SWR

»In her new collection of poems, Nora Bossong finds poetic images for all the predicaments of our age.« Frankfurter Rundschau                                                                                                      

»A wonderful collection of miniatures from close by and further afield, which offers us readers delicate sincerity, the occasional sharp-tongued observation, exhilarating discoveries and a historical perspective. A real gift.« Kölner Stadt Anzeiger

»Those who continue to think of aesthetes in ivory towers when they hear the word “poetry” clearly have no clue about contemporary poetry and certainly have not read Nora Bossong. At breakneck speed she travels through Europe, poetically musing upon its inhabitants and immigrants, cities and provinces ... and even manages to dedicate powerful verses to the registration office as well as ›A4‹ paper, ones whose echoes continue to sound for a long time.« Welt am Sonntag

»Crusade with a Dog is one of the most important poetry collections of recent times. For there where others are still looking for a language with which they might capture and describe the world’s debacles, Bossong has found it.« Süddeutsche Zeitung

»This collection of poems becomes truly captivating when one opens oneself to its wealth of allusions, to all of its interconnections.« Die literarische Welt