Shaping Multilingual Identity in Angelika Overath’s Bilingual Romansh-German Poetry

Since moving to Switzerland from Germany in 2006, Angelika Overath has increasingly engaged with the minority language Romansh in her writing. In her bilingual Romansh–German poetry collections, Overath employs processes of self-translation to negotiate a multilingual linguistic identity in literature. In this article I demonstrate how Overath’s poetry can be understood in terms of a translation of the self through an exploration of linguistic and literary creativity. In doing so I demonstrate how Overath simultaneously subverts linguistic expectations and power structures through her engagement with Romansh and the production of bilingual poetry.