Sarah Kuratle
- Austria -
Sarah Kuratle, born in 1989 in Bad Ischl, grew up on both sides of the Austrian-Swiss border. She studied German literature and philosophy. She writes poetry and lyrical prose. Her debut novel "Greta und Jannis. Vor acht oder in einhundert Jahren" was shortlisted for the Text & Language Literature Prize. For her current novel project, she received the Pro Helvetia Literary Creation Grant in 2023.
Even in the author's prose, the fundamental tone of lyrical writing is unmistakable. In a conversation with fellow writer and editor Andreas Unterweger, she says: “I found my way from poetry to prose. Sometimes I try to read my lines as if I could sing a song with them.” Regarding her debut novel, it is said: “A gentle stretching out of the fingertips and a groping for what the Austrian writer Sarah Kuratle wants to tell us in her first novel. The fact that something delicately sparkling is at work here, that sentences come across so lightly and seemingly effortlessly, is not a sign of simplicity but proof of literary quality.”
The prologue to a conversation between Sarah Kuratle and Anna Herzig (morehotlist 2022) also provides further insight into the author's approach to her tool, language, and her always poetically underpinned handling of it, as Sarah Kuratle formulates:
“Language can be different, always different, full of life. Formulating can be like a game with loose rules. Word for word like a puzzle with ever more, ever different pieces. Language can order and wildly proliferate, designate and interpret, like line and color. Whoever speaks may sing. Whoever writes may also make music. If language is a frame, then it can always encompass more than what we actually want to put behind glass, supposedly to look at. If words are as accurate as arrows, then I think: What flies, flies with the wind. (...) When I write about life, things sometimes change. When writing, I sit on a chair, but the chair lifts off the ground. Then a hat is not just a hat, but a hat with lynx ear tufts, phoenix feathers, bees, and snail shells. We set the narrow boundaries of reality with reason and what we infer from experience. In fantasy, different points of reference apply, even in life, in what we feel or sense, we are much further, I believe.”
Andreas Unterweger wrote a portrait of the author (available online at the ARTfaces gallery of the State of Styria), which he introduces with excerpts from the jury's statement on awarding the manuskripte Förderpreis from the City of Graz in 2016: “With Sarah Kuratle, manuskripte were fortunate to discover a new, truly unique voice for Austrian literature." During the conversation, the colleague is impressed by Kuratle's personal reading list: “If this isn't the most original reading list since that of H. C. Artmann! At the same time, it also becomes clearer to me why the texts of this writer sound so unique, as they do ...”
For the poet and finely chiseling prose author reveals: “To name just a few, with drama, sensual play, details, fairy tales, and sentiment: Pelléas and Mélisande by Maurice Maeterlinck, Mein Herz by Else Lasker-Schüler, the Haibun by Matsuo Bashō, was brauchst du by Friederike Mayröcker, Gram by Anton Chekhov, and Der goldne Topf by E. T. A. Hoffmann." Already at the beginning of Sarah Kuratle's writing career, Andreas Unterweger is convinced of the unmistakable quality of her work and reflects: “The already then unmistakable Kuratle sound, which knows how to combine a fairy-tale, often even song-like tone with lines from pop, philosophy, and picture titles, without ever drifting into the hermetic.” Sarah Kuratle's poetry and lyrical prose are refracted through the prism of her language in a unique way, unfolding a dimension of singular brilliance.
Poetry
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Angel in the Making / Engel im Werden
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Turned around the Times / Gedreht um die Zeiten
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Heartseed / Herzsame
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Her Feet in my Steps / Ihre Füße in meinen Schritten
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Now I am here / Jetzt bin ich da
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Poppies and Mint / Mohn und Minze
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From the Ground up / Von Grund auf
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Not at the Edge / Am Rande nicht
