Ilma Rakusa was born in 1946 in Slovakia, to a Hungarian and Slovenian parents, and spent her childhood in Budapest, Ljubljana and Trieste. From 1965-1971 she studied Slav Languages & Literature, and Romance Languages & Literature in Zurich, Paris and St Petersburg and in 1971 was awarded a doctorate for her dissertation on the 'Theme of Loneliness in Russian Literature', later published in Berne. Ilma Rakusa writes poetry prose and essays in German, and translates from French, Russian, Serbo-Croat and Hungarian into German. This volume is a translation of her 1997 German collection "Ein Strich durch alles", a collection of 90 "nine-liners", composed over a 21-month period in various locations. These elliptical poems mark a new departure in her work. This English-only volume is the first full-length English translation of her poetry to appear, and is her first UK publication.

Translated by: Andrew Shields, Andrew Winnard