Freedoms of expression: poetry translations in the East Berlin Poesiealbum

This article explores the translations into German which were published in East Berlin between 1967 and 1990 in a magazine called the Poesiealbum. Instead of concerning itself with what was lost in translation, this exploration focuses on what was found in translation, namely freedoms of expression that were otherwise being censored out of existence. The peculiarities of the Poesiealbum as a magazine, and the possibilities for the poetry within it, lay with its conditions of production and reception in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). A situation where expression was politically controlled serves to highlight how poetry translation can potentially exert a radical redress by recovering themes, forms and even discourses otherwise excluded