Because of the war, in 1940 the couple Hilde and Erwin Walter Palm decided to leave England, their second place of exile, and flee overseas. Through personal contacts they got visas for the Dominican Republic. The man in power there, the dictator Trujillo Molina, wanted to “racially enhance” his country by actively attracting white refugees from Europe: “a fearsome saviour”, as Hilde Domin later described him. Skin and eye colour were checked at the start of the residency authorisation process for the poet, who had been stateless since 1939. 

Arriving in each new country also brought an encounter with a new language: in Italy, Domin had translated the academic writings of her husband into Italian; in London into English; and in the Dominican Republic she studied Spanish intensively so that Palm would be able to publish there too. In each case, her access to the language came through her engagement with the poetry of the country – on the boat that brought the couple from England first to Canada, the Palms read Mexican and Argentinian poets in order to prepare themselves for the Dominican Republic. They stopped speaking Italian, their “secret language” during their exile in England, and once again spoke to each other only in German.

On this island in the Greater Antilles, Hilde Domin began to write poems following the death of her mother.  When her poems were to be published following their return to Germany, referring to the secure place where she began writing, Hilde Palm chose the pseudonym “Domin”.