Ulrike Ebert
1955, Lörrach (D)
Urike Ebert lives in Lörrach (DE)
The Headache
The headache
pulls my hair.
sleep
ought to be
regular and modest
I wake up
at five,
listening to the birds.
hello!
What to do with this day?
Shall I?
Altwiibersummer*
There are
images
in the language
you need
a lifetime
to grasp.
*Altweibersommer: Indian summer, literally: old women's summer
Life
Ulrike Ebert, was born and raised in Lörrach in 1955, and lived with her family in Müllheim-Niederweiler after studying school music, rhythm and piano at the Musikhochschule Freiburg. She recently moved to Freiburg, where she has been working at the Fachschule für Sozialpädagogik for more than 30 years. In 2006 Drey-Verlag published her highly acclaimed volume of Alemannic poems "im handchehrum". As with the turn of a hand (handchehrum), without effort, these poems seem to be conjured up with a light hand and a stylish sense from everyday life. They are bursting with life, even if sometimes soft tones of Alemannic melancholy appear beneath the surface.
Ulrike Ebert's prose debut "Warnlaute vom Tag" tells of a childhood between longing for the mostly absent actor-father and the loving relationship with a wise grandmother, of the difficult treatment as an only child with the mother disappointed by the father, of the joys of discovery of a sensitive and imaginative child and the "black pedagogy" of the 50s. The laconic yet pictorial language, without artificial pandering that would deny the distance of the adult author, allows the reader to approach the children's perspective cautiously and quite naturally.
Parts two and three show the child's growth into adolescence, the path of childlike love from loneliness to a you of the same age, the maturation of a gift of love. And then we can experience the grown up as enchanted by nature, as a gardener, as a mother and lover, as disappointed and happy. In extremely supple, mature prose language, a life is not made great, but appreciated in its uniqueness as greatness.
Literary Works
- im handchehrum. Drey-Verlag, Gutach 2006. ISBN 978-3-933765-28-4. 116 S.
- Warnlaute vom Tag. Drey-Verlag, Gutach 2018. ISBN 978-3-933765-95-6. 159 S.