German / Austria
Was keiner kapiert
(What no one gets)
Hammerschmid, Michael
(text)
Hoffmann, Barbara
(illus.)
Wien: Jungbrunnen, 2024. – 104 p.
ISBN 978-3-7026-5996-7
Coming of age | Identity | Poetry
Reading age: 12+
White Ravens issue: 2025
Michael Hammerschmid is one of Austria’s most renowned (children’s) poets. In the bright blue volume »Was keiner kapiert« (What no one gets), he takes a step out of childhood and toward adolescence, exploring a phase of life that is as full of contradictions and intensity as hardly any other. The themes include searching for meaning and self-discovery, falling in love, love itself, everyday life, school, feeling overwhelmed, and boredom. Hammerschmid’s poems are powerful, raw, and rhythmic. Sometimes the verses are tender, sometimes worldly-wise, sometimes exhausted, and then other times coarse. Hammerschmid strings the words together in succession – bam bam bam – creating surprising connections. He works with repetitions and often with line breaks that make the reader stumble. This can result in a loss of rhythm – which also mirrors the emotional state of youth. The illustrations by Barbara Hoffmann are at times concrete, at other times abstract, thereby depicting particular details or moods. [IG]