Friederike Mayröcker: 90th Birthday on December 20, 2014

Our sincere congratulations to our author Friederike Mayröcker on her 90th birthday!

Friederike Mayröcker was born in 1924 in Vienna. From 1946-69 she taught English at various secondary schools in Vienna. Her first literary works date back to 1939. She published poems in a journal as of 1946, in 1956 her first book came out. Since then she has written poetry, prose, plays, radio plays and children''s books. She has been honoured with numerous distinguished national and international literary awards. Her Oeuvre is published with Suhrkamp and her works have been translated into more than a dozen of languages.

what do you need

what do you need? a tree, a hours
to tell you how tall how small is human life
how tall how small when you gaze up the crown of the tree
and lose yourself in lush green beauty
how tall how small when you think how short
your life is compared with the life of trees
you need a tree you need a house
not for yourself alone just a corner a roof
to sit to reflect to sleep to dream
to write to be silent to glimpse your dear friend
the constellations the grass flowers sky

for Heinz Lunzer

Friederike Mayröcker: what do you need (was brauchst du)

translated by Richard Dove

from: Raving Language: Selected Poems 1946-2006
published in 2007 by Carcanet Press Limited
© Richard Dove 2007 (for the English translation)
© Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin

For more information please visit the author's Foreign Rights Website or contact the respective Rights Manager.