Sarah Kirsch was a leading East German poet before leaving in 1977 for West Germany, where her work was already highly regarded. While she had supported many of the political and social aims of the Communist government in the GDR, she had been active during the 1960s in opposing the restrictions of the official creed of social realism, by writing poetry concerned with private emotion and individual perception. She has been the recipient of many literary awards, including the Austrian State Prize for Literature and the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, and is today considered one of the most eminent German poets.

Born in 1935 in Limlingerode, Sarah Kirsch studied biology at the University of Halle. Her poems first appeared in East German magazines in the early 1960s. In 1976 she joined eleven other writers in protests against the expulsion from East Germany of the singer-poet Wolf Biermann. This led to her own expulsion from the Communist Party, and to her permanent move to West Germany.

In her close, stylish versions of Sarah Kirsch's poems, which combine fluid movement with abrupt dislocations of syntax, and in her choice of poems from all phases of her work, Margitt Lehbert demonstrates the qualities which make Sarah Kirsch's poetry so original and compelling.

Margitt Lehbert has studied in Konstanz, Berlin and at the University of Iowa, where she received an MFA in Translation. She is a freelance teacher and translator both from and into German.