“im speichel gebildet, gebubbelt, gebabelt”: Poetic and Political Evolution in the Multilingual Writing of Uljana Wolf

The chapter explores Uljana Wolf’s evolving engagement with multilingualism across her three lyric collections: kochanie ich habe brot gekauft (2005), falsche freunde (2009), and meine schönste lengevitch (2013). Drawing on Wolf’s poetological writings, it analyses her early work as examples of multilingual poems (mehrsprachige Gedichte) and her later work in terms of translingual lyric (translinguale Lyrik). The chapter identifies an aesthetic and poetological shift in Wolf’s work and situates it within the theoretical frameworks of critical multilingualism and the postmonolingual paradigm. By examining specific lyric cycles within these collections, the chapter demonstrates how Wolf transitions from a monolingual understanding to a more nuanced, subversive approach to language diversity, reflecting broader challenges to traditional monolingual ideologies and concepts of univocal cultural belonging.