The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class That Tried to Win the Cold War by Philip Oltermann

By Timothy Sandefur

London: Faber, 2022.

210 pp. $15.63 (paperback)

Sometime in the early 1960s, the East German secret police—commonly known as the Stasi—convened some of its staff to compose and share their own poetry. The group called themselves the Writing Circle of Chekists, borrowing the word “cheka” from their fellow spies in Russia, and they met once a month for almo…