Although the Austrian poet Georg Trakl was born over a century ago, the mesmerising imagery and haunting visions of his highly sensitive and morbidly introspective poetry are as powerful today as they were when he poured forth his extraordinary and unclassifiable volume of work. A source of inspiration for artists, musicians and writers throughout the Expressionist period and beyond, Trakl's poetry – bleak, yet full of tenderness and hope, nightmarish yet eeriely beautiful...

The Austrian poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914) wrote with a singular voice that captivated a wide range of admirers: the philosophers Heidegger and Wittgenstein; fellow writers and poets like Beckett, Rilke, and Walser; and composers such as Webern and Hindemith.Two collections of his poetry were prepared for publication during his lifetime. The vast majority of poems in the first book, Poems (1913), feature crystalline meters and regular rhyme schemes that produce a hypnotic m...