About ursula-mirbach-poetry.com

Poems, written over a period of 30 years about liaisons with men, work, moods, seasons and struggles with addiction. Most of them originally written in my native German, translated to English. Unfortunately, rhymes and some double entendres are lost in translation.

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The poems as well as my other writings are immensely personal and were never intended for publication, but I have finally decided to issue them via a website after a life-long identity struggle in which I have oscillated between being an international civil servant in Brussels during daytime and a 'secret' poetess at night. I have never taken my poetry-writing too seriously, but in retrospect, when sifting through old poems, I find some of them beautiful enough to issue them to the public.

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I would call the poems' style 'pictorial symbolism', very much down to interpretation and at times even slightly mystical. It is mostly intuitive and almost writes itself, without too much intellectual reflection. The poems often convey a very melancholic, sometimes outright depressed mood. It may leave the reader with the impression that I am perpetually depressed, but this is not the case: I simply use poem-writing as an outlet in times of great emotional distress. Also afraid of producing 'kitsch' which is why I have often refrained from writing when I was exulting with joy. The poetic, 'indirect' style is perpetuated in my prose.

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Inspiration came initially from Sylvia Plath, Ingeborg Bachmann and Sarah Kirsch. The early writings - hardly structured - are trying to channel them, but at a certain moment I understood that I had to write like Ursula, not someone else to be authentic.

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Enjoy!

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