Friederike Mayröcker

Friederike Mayröcker (20 December 1924 – 4 June 2021) was an Austrian writer of poetry and prose, radio plays, children's books and dramatic texts. She experimented with language, and was regarded as an avant-garde poet,

Life Mayröcker was born in Vienna, the daughter of a teacher and a milliner. Until age 11, she spent the summers regularly in the village Deinzendorf.

She started writing poetry at age 15.

Mayröcker is recognized as one of the most important contemporary Austrian poets. Her prose is often described as autofictional, since Mayröcker uses quotes of private conversations and excerpts from letters and diaries in her work. She described her working process: "I live in pictures. I see everything in pictures, my complete past, memories are pictures. I transform pictures into language by climbing into the picture. I walk into it until it becomes language."

She sometimes included her drawings in books, and exhibited her art. Her last lyric collection, da ich morgens und moosgrün. Ans Fenster trete (as mornings and mossgreen I. Step to the window), with the jury saying that she "fuses poetry and prose into 'proems' full of infatuations, futilities, fantasies, daydreams".

Awards

1963: Theodor Körner Prize 1969: Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden for Fünf Mann Menschen (with Ernst Jandl) 2001: Honorary doctorate, Bielefeld University 2009: Hermann-Lenz-Preis for poem Scardanelli 2010: Peter Huchel Prize for This jacket (namely) the griffin Gesammelte Prosa 1949–2001 (Collected Prose 1949–2001) ed. by Klaus Reichert, 5 volumes, Frankfurt/Main 2001 Magische Blätter I-V (Magic Pages I–V), Frankfurt/Main 2001 Requiem für Ernst Jandl (Requiem for Ernst Jandl), Frankfurt/Main 2001 Mein Arbeitstirol – Gedichte 1996–2001 (My Working Tyrol – Poems 1996–2001), Frankfurt/Main 2003 Die kommunizierenden Gefäße (The Communicating Vessels) Frankfurt/Main 2003 Sinclair Sofokles der Baby-Saurier (Sinclair Sofokles the Baby Dinosaur) with coloured illustrations by Angelika Kaufmann, St. Pölten 2004 Gesammelte Gedichte 1939–2003 (Collected Poems) ed. by Marcel Beyer, Frankfurt/Main 2005 Und ich schüttelte einen Liebling (And I Shook a Darling), Frankfurt/Main 2005 fleurs, Suhrkamp, Berlin 2016, Pathos und Schwalbe, Suhrkamp, Berlin 2018,

Audio plays Audio plays by Mayröcker, some written jointly with Jandl, include:

Die Umarmung, nach Picasso (The Embrace, After Picasso) Repetitionen, nach Max Ernst (Repetitions, After Max Ernst) Arie auf tönernen Füßen (Aria on Feet of Clay) Das zu Sehende, das zu Hörende (The to Be Seen, the to Be Heard) Die Kantate oder, Gottes Augenstern bist Du (The Cantata or, Gods Eye-star You Are), music by Wolfgang von Schweinitz (2003) with Ernst Jandl: Der Gigant (The Giant) Gemeinsame Kindheit (Childhood Together) Fünf Mann Menschen, translated as Five Man Humanity Spaltungen (Partitions)

Libretto Stretta, music by Wolfram Wagner. World premiere at Sirene Opera, Vienna 2004

Translations Several of Mayröcker’s collections have been translated into English, including Night Train (1992, trans. Beth Bjorklund); Heiligenanstalt (1994, trans. Rosmarie Waldrop); with each clouded peak (1998, trans. Rosmarie Waldrop and Harriett Watts); peck me up, my wing (2000, trans. Mary Burns); Raving Language: Selected Poems 1946–2006 (2007, trans. Richard Dove); and brütt, or The Sighing Gardens (2008, trans. Roslyn Theobald).