Andra Schwarz’s probing, unpunctuated poems take us into her native Lusatia, a region in Eastern Germany near the Polish and Czech borders that has undergone drastic changes from coal mining, politics, and demographic shifts. Her work addresses loss, nature, displacement, marginalization, and memory from personal and collective perspectives. In the forests and hillsides, she explores her roots in exquisite language, even as she mourns that “no one comes back this way.”
A poet illuminates the landscape and culture of her birthplace — and what is lost as they disappear.
