From A Ballet Dancer To A Poet

The forty-one year old read from her works to a niche audience comprising literary enthusiasts and connoisseurs of the written word at My Cafe Latte, Film Nagar, on Sunday. She started off with a few poems and then passages from her prose, both written in German.

The translations, laced with subtle humour, were read out for the audience’s benefit by Nikhilesh Sinha, the moderator at the session. Speaking to The Hans India, Silke reflected on her journey from wanting to be a ballet dancer to becoming a poet-writer, “My dreams of becoming a ballet dancer were cut short when I realised that I couldn’t progress from being that girl standing in the corner of the ballet studio. Then I participated in a poetry competition and won it.

I jotted down a few more poems soon after and a big publisher expressed interest in my work and here I am, ten books later.” Silke’s work includes three novels, a children’s book and the rest poetry. A student of literature and theatre studies at Frankfurt, Leipzig and Paris, ‘The Hour Between Dog and Wolf’, her first novel, and ‘Female Wonder’ (Frauleinwunder) won praise from critics.

Her work of poetry, translated into the English, will be published in India soon. On translations, she shares, “There are some translations that keep rambling on. I worked very closely with the translator on my work and ensured that that was not the case. The English translation of my work doesn’t differ greatly from the original.”

“My first work of poetry was greatly inspired by the real world and science. My work also deals with the feeling of exclusion when you are in a different city, like an artist in some city like Shanghai, and about women who are discriminated against. In the end, it all comes down to the beauty of how the language flows on paper,” the author shares.

Scheuermann’s poetry was mainly free verse. On whether she prefers the form, she says, “I like free verse. I like sonnets, too. The two forms are a major part of my work.” She shared that she liked English poets like Whitman, Ginsberg and others and that she was presently reading the work of indian author Vikram Chandra.