Ilma Rakusa was born in 1946 in Slovakia, to a Hungarian and Slovenian parents, and spent her childhood in Budapest, Ljubljana and Trieste. From 1965-1971 she studied Slav Languages & Literature, and Romance Languages & Literature in Zürich, Paris and St Petersburg and in 1971 was awarded a doctorate for her dissertation on the 'Theme of Loneliness in Russian Literature', later published in Berne.Ilma Rakusa writes poetry prose and essays in German, and translates from French, Russian, Serbo-Croat and Hungarian into German. This volume is a translation of her 1997 German collection "Ein Strich durch alles", a collection of 90 "nine-liners", composed over a 21-month period in various locations. These elliptical poems mark a new departure in her work. This English-only volume is the first full-length English translation of her poetry to appear, and is her first UK publication.