Dimension2: Matthias Buth

BUTH, Matthias: Matthias Buth was born in Wupperthal-Elberfeld in 1951 and now lives near Cologne. He went to law school and wrote his dissertaion on East German criminal law. He writes primarily poetry but also prose and reviews. His publications include Ohne Kompass [1984; Without Compass], Kopfüber nach Deutz [1989; Head Over Heals toward Deutz] and Die Stille nach dem Axthieb [1997; The Calm After the Stroke of the Axe]. Several of his poems have been set to music. In the German Ministry of the Interior, it is one of his responsibilities to attend to German literature in Eastern Europe. Printed with permission of the author, the poems published in Volume 3, Number 2 are taken from the unpublished typescripts Neue Gedichte [New Poems] and Bretonische Monologe [Bretonic Monologues], which are included in his collection of poems, Die Stille nach dem Axthieb [The Calm after the Stroke of the Ax]. The poems in his most recent book, Zwischen mir und vorbei [2007; Between me and Past], have been praised by Jiří Gruša as grounded in a wide range of places—such as Berlin, Vienna, Silesia, Moravia, and Romania—and, at the same time, as focused on a contemporary sense of history that ultimately remains unspeakable. In this sense, Buth's poems are both romantic and modern.

Land (Country) from Die Stille nach dem Axthieb : Vol. 3, No. 2

Kronstädter Konzert und andere Gedichte (Concert in Kronstadt and other Poems) from Zwischen mir und vorbei