I live in Germany as a woman, mum, daughter, teacher, mediator, friend, lover and poet.

Being a person who likes to get close to people and their feelings and thoughts, my life is kind of helter-skelter sometimes. For some time now writing poetry has been my means of downloading encounters and experiences and the emotions caused by them.

By writing "pain" down, I not only overcome it but transcend it also. By writing "love" down, "love" finally shows itself as something much bigger than just the mere feelings for a person at a certain moment. It shows sides neither I nor anybody else sees in the moment when love is happening in real time...maybe in my poems it shows some of its true nature.

Poetry transcends what actually happens in my "real" life: when the words are finally on the page, it is more than what actually occured. In a poem there might be less words than I would need if I told the encounter to a friend, but what is on the page is more dense and intense than anything I could say in prose.  It still amazes me that these poems come through me.

My poems are larger than me. They have their own "life". They are the closest I can get to a glimpse of the divine process of creation, which in writing manifests itself through me for a very short moment in time and makes me a humble servant to creativity. 

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Ulrike's first book of poetry "Every Woman's Blues" can be ordered directly from Lapwing Press, Belfast. Enquiries via email: catherine.greig1@ntlworld.com