Sarah Kirsch (1935–2013) is recognised as one of Germany’s most powerful poets of the post-war era. She lived and worked first in East Germany, then (after political persecution) in the West, making her home finally in rural Schleswig-Holstein. Her poetry’s free-flowing syntax and fluid sound patterning reflect her lifelong resistance to constraint and convention. Anne Stokes’ translations above all capture the living sounds and rhythms of Kirsch’s writing. In Ice Roses Anglophone readers experience the full range of Kirsch’s poetry, from her early work to her last books, full of the strange beauty of her chosen landscapes.