Bloodaxe Nordic Poetry Reissues

 Bloodaxe are reissuing a range of European poetry classics, including three Nordic titles in my translation:

- Edith Södergran, Complete Poems

- Karin Boye, Complete Poems

- Mirjam Tuominen, Selected Writings

Priorities

It’s remarkable that although two full-length biographies of Karin Boye now exist (Margit Abenius --Drabbad av renhet [1950) and Johan Svedjedal -- Den nya dagen gryr [2017]), neither has yet been published in English translation. It often increasingly seems that when it comes to the Nordic countries the interest of UK/US publishers lies almost exclusively in the direction of light fiction and fantasy, with much less attention given to the skönlitteratur that is the primary token of the Nordic presence in the European cultural heritage.

My Translations

I've made a list of my published Nordic book-length translations. At present it looks like this:

from Finland-Swedish and Swedish

Edith Södergran: Complete Poems (Bloodaxe Books, UK)
Ice Around Our Lips - 10 Finland-Swedish Poets (Bloodaxe)
Bo Carpelan: Axel (Carcanet Press, UK)
Tua Forsström: Snow Leopard (Bloodaxe)
Tua Forsström: I Studied Once At A Wonderful Faculty (Bloodaxe) [with S. Katchadourian]
Tua Forsström: One Evening in October I Rowed Out on the Lake (Bloodaxe)
Gösta Ågren: A Valley In The Midst of Violence (Bloodaxe) (awarded TLS/George Bernard Shaw Translation Prize, 1994)
Gösta Ågren: Standing Here (ebook), The Cities (ebook), Coming Here (ebook)
Bo Carpelan: Homecoming (Carcanet)
Karin Boye: Complete Poems (Bloodaxe)
Mirjam Tuominen: Selected Writings (Bloodaxe)
Bo Carpelan: Urwind (Carcanet)
Bo Carpelan: The Year's Circle (Marjukka Vainio)
Tove Jansson: The Moomins And The Great Flood (Schildts)
Tove Jansson: The Moomins And The Great Flood (Sortof Books, UK)
Various authors: Dolce far niente in Arabia [G.A. Wallin and His Travels in the 1840s] (Museum Tusculanum Press/Society of Swedish Literature in Finland)

 from Finnish

Marianne Aav (ed.) Marimekko - Fabrics, Fashion, Architecture (Yale University Press)
Anni Sumari (ed.) How To Address the Fog (Carcanet, UK) - with Donald Adamson and Robin Fulton
Rosa Liksom:  Dark Paradise (Dalkey Archive Press, USA)
Tuomas Kyrö: The Beggar and the Hare (Short Books)
Tuula Karjalainen: Tove Jansson: Work and Love (Particular Books)

from Norwegian

Contemporary Norwegian Prose Writers (Oslo University Press, Norway)
Gunnar Staalesen: At Night All Wolves Are Grey (Quartet, UK)
Geir Kjetsaa: Fyodor Dostoyevsky - A Writer's Life (Viking USA and Macmillan UK) - translated with Siri Hustvedt
Øysteinn Lønn: Tom Reber's Last Retreat (Marion Boyars)

from Icelandic

Ólafur Gunnarsson: Gaga (Penumbra Press, Toronto, Canada), Trolls’ Cathedral (Shad Thames Books/Mare's Nest, UK), and Million-Percent Men (FORLAGIÐ JPV útgáfa, Iceland)
Brushstrokes of Blue [with Bernard Scudder]: The Young Poets of Iceland, anthology, ed. P. Valsson (Shad Thames Books/Greyhound Press, UK)
Einar Kárason: Devil's Island (Canongate, UK)
Bjarni Bjarnason: The Return of the Divine Mary (Red Hand Books, UK)
Bjarni Bjarnason: The Reputation (Red Hand Books, UK)

from Danish

Pia Tafdrup: Queen's Gate (Bloodaxe Books, UK)
Pia Tafdrup: Tarkovsky’s Horses and Other Poems (Bloodaxe Books, UK)
Pia Tafdrup: Salamander Sun (Bloodaxe)

http://metaphrases.co.uk/web/dmcdnordic.htm

Nordic Council Literature Prize 2011

The complete run-down of candidates for the 2011 Nordic Council Literature Award is as follows (NB Norway's Beate Grimsrud wrote her novel in both Norwegian and in Swedish versions):


Denmark

Josefine Klougart
Stigninger og fald
Novel, Rosinante, 2010

Harald Voetmann
Vågen
Novel, Gyldendal, 2010

Finland

Erik Wahlström
Flugtämjaren
Novel, Schildts, 2010

Kristina Carlson
Herra Darwinin puutarhuri (Herr Darwins trädgårdsmästare)
Novel, Otava, 2009 (Swedish translation, Janina Orlov)

Iceland

Gyrðir Elíasson
Milli trjánna (Bland träden)
Short stories, Uppheimar, 2009, (Swedish translation, John Swedenmark)

Ísak Harðarson
Rennur upp um nótt (Stiger upp om natten)
Poems, Uppheimar, 2009, (Swedish translation, John Swedenmark)

Norway

Beate Grimsrud
En dåre fri
Novel, Cappelen Damm, 2010

Carl Frode Tiller
Innsirkling 2
Novel, Aschehoug, 2010

Sweden

Beate Grimsrud
En dåre fri
Novel, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2010

Anna Hallberg
Colosseum, Kolosseum
Poetry Collection, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2010

Faroe Islands

Tóroddur Poulsen
Útsýni (Utsikt)
Poetry collection, Mentunargrunnur Studentafelagsins, 2009, (Swedish translation, Anna Mattsson)

Greenland

Kristian Olsen Aaju
Kakiorneqaqatigiit (Det tatoverede budskab)
Novel, Forlaget Atuagkat, 2010

Åland Islands

Sonja Nordenswan
Blues från ett krossat världshus
Novel, PQR-kultur, 2009

The Sami Language Area

Kerttu Vuolab
Bárbmoáirras (Paradisets stjerne)
Novel, Davvi Girji OS, 2008

(Via the Nordic Council)

Ice Floe

The first issue of the new series of Ice Floe is now available from University of Alaska Press - the inaugural issue presents new poems as well as a selection of work from the first seven years of the publication's existence, and the poets represented hail from  Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

Ice Floe

Shannon Gramse writes that Ice Floe, the international magazine which publishes poetry from northern latitudes - not only in English but also, with facing English translations, in numerous other languages including Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Inupiaq and many more - is about to relaunch under the auspices of the University of Alaska Press. The first issue of the new series will include work by Tua Forsström and Bo Carpelan. See also:

http://www.adn.com/2009/12/05/1042357/the-return-of-ice-floe.html

Shady characters?

In HUB - the magazine of Helsinki University - Janna Kantola takes a look at how Finns are portrayed in foreign literature. Starting with Tacitus, the profile of Finns is an obscure one, to say the least (Tacitus appears to have thought that Finns and Lapps were the same), and their image in 19th century Russian literature is also quite a shadowy one. But it's not until we reach the modern era, and especially the era of the thriller, that the picture begins to clarify, and not always in a positive direction:. in particular, it seems that Finns are not liked by their Nordic neighbours, and have reason to feel insulted:

The Finnish characters appearing in Nordic literature are in a class of their own. Finns are primarily drunkards and on the wrong side of the law.

The shady characters in Stieg Larsson's recent Millennium series of detective stories frequently have Finnish names. In the series, the heroine, Lisbeth Salander, finds herself being chased by characters such as the simple duo of Sonny Nieminen and Hans-Åke Waltari.

Read it all.

Hat tip: Soila Lehtonen

SELTA, etc.

Well, I've sent off my annual SELTA subscription renewal - by my calculations it's now 29 years since I first joined the society, and I guess it hasn't really changed much in all that time, in spite of some members' aspirations to give it a wider focus. This time last year members were arguing the pros and cons of a broader coverage of Nordic literature in general, then this blog was formed, then it broke up and became a one-man effort - and SELTA stayed the same.

My situation is still that, like other members, although I've done a fair amount of literary translation from Swedish, it's not my only field of activity - my most recent publication is a book of poetry translations from Danish, and I'm currently planning another one. But SELTA still fulfils an important function in keeping the U.K.'s various Nordic translators in contact with one another. Even if the pan-Nordic element is underplayed to the advantage of a Swedish emphasis, and many of the associate members have published little by way of literary translations, this continues to be a unique professional body - for translation is after all a profession, rather than an academic subject or a stop-gap, subsidiary activity, as this intelligent post by B.J. Epstein points out.

Bestsellers

Nordic Bookblog has a list of the Top 20 Bestselling Scandinavian Books at Amazon US.

As the NB post points out, the list is a somewhat idiosyncratic one, with notable and questionable omissions. There are also problems of geography (where is Scandinavia?). And there's an interesting feature:

to the extent the list can be assumed to tell anything – old Nordic sagas and writers like especially Sigrid Undset, but also Rolvaag, Hamsun and Ibsen seem to be selling quite well in the US.

Nordic Council Literature Prize nominations

They are as follows:

Denmark

• Peter Laugesen, Fotorama (Photorama), Poetry Collection, Forlaget Borgen 2009
• Ida Jessen, Børnene (The Children), Novel, Forlaget Gyldendal 2009

Finland

• Sofi Oksanen, Puhdistus (Purge), Novel, WSOY 2008
• Monika Fagerholm, Glitterscenen (The Glitter Scene), Novel, Söderströms och Albert Bonniers Förlag 2009

Iceland

• Einar Kárason, Ofsi (Fury), Novel, Mál og menning 2008, (Danish translation, Kim Lembek)

• Steinar Bragi, Konur (Women), Novel, Mál og menning 2008, (Swedish translation, Inge Knudson)

Norway

• Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 1 (My Struggle, Part 1), Novel, Förlaget Oktober 2009
• Tomas Espedal, Imot kunsten (notatbøkene) (Towards Art (the notebokks)), Novel, Gyldendal 2009

Sweden

• Steve Sem-Sandberg, De fattiga i Łódź (The Destitutes of Lodz), Novel, Albert Bonniers Förlag 2009

• Ann Jäderlund, Vad hjälper det en människa om hon häller rent vatten över sig i alla sina dagar (What Does It Help A Person If She Pours Clean Water Over Herself For All Of Her Days), Poetry Collection, Albert Bonniers Förlag 2009

Faroe Islands

• Gunnar Hoydal, Í havsins hjarta (In the Heart of the Sea), Roman, Forlaget Sprotin 2007, (Danish translation, Jette Hoydal)

Greenland

No nominations submitted

The Sami Language Area

No nominations submitted

The winner will be chosen in Helsinki on March 29-30 2010.
http://www.norden.org/en/nordic-council/the-nordic-council-prizes/literature-prize/nominations-2010

Detective Story - 4

Continuing the discussion of this thorny subject, I've raised two contributions from the comments to this post:

Larissa Kyzer said...

I wrote the article responding to Nathaniel Rich’s piece about Scandinavian crime fiction, and have followed the discussion here and in other blogs surrounding these pieces with interest. The debate over what country or region produces the ‘best’ of any type of literature is bound to be limited (I said as much in my article), but I find myself a bit at odds with the polarization here: those who are for Scandinavian crime fiction and those who are against it. I am deeply interested in Scandinavian literature--including crime fiction--and aspire to translate Danish literature myself one day. I’d hope that one can be a ‘committed’ translator and also foster an appreciation for genre fiction at the same time. (It’s seemed to me that many Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian fiction translators have translated both ‘literary’ and genre fiction.)

While many of the points made by David McDuff regarding crime fiction have raised some important and interesting points—particularly that current Scandinavian crime fiction marks a “continuation of the "radical" movement that produced the socially-committed novels and poetry of the 1970s,”—I wonder at the assessment that the prevalence of this genre within Scandinavian literature is “a tragedy whose consequences it will take several generations to overcome.”

It’s a common enough opinion that genre fiction of any stripe is inherently sub-literary, which is a debate that is perhaps larger than needs be argued here. Suffice to say that I do think that genre fiction merits serious literary consideration for its content, structure, and yes, even prose style. There are certainly many, many poorly written and conceived crime novels, but surely enough there are terrible ‘literary’ novels as well. However, I don't believe that the existence of crime novels can, with any credibility, be faulted with ‘diverting’ Nordic writing talent. Rather, I tend to hope that translation begets translation—that every new Henning Mankell or Karin Fossum novel that is published in English opens the door a little wider for more ‘literary’ Scandinavian authors to be translated as well.

David McDuff said...

Thank you for this contribution to the discussion. While I also don't think there should be a "polarization" of the kind you mention, I do believe that it's important to set some sort of markers as to what constitutes literary culture and what is basically just "reading entertainment". I'm certainly not against the latter, and have translated at least one Scandinavian crime novel myself - but when crime novels become the flagship of a nation's literary production, I think it's a danger signal.

In a later post to this blog, I've been more specific. There I argue (together with the author of the article quoted by the anonymous blogger at Scandinavian Crime Fiction), that of all the Nordic countries it's primarily Sweden where the problem is most acute - in Sweden there is virtually no middle ground between the marginalized avant-garde literary scene and the huge space that's occupied by bestsellerdom, led primarily by trend-following crime novels of various kinds and tendencies. The situation in Denmark is different, as is evidenced by the popularity of the traditional historical novel genre there, for example. Finland presents a similar picture.

So while the problem isn't yet universal, what I have tried to make clear is that it has the potential for a disaster, a tragedy - please read what I wrote in my original post a little more carefully. My caveats are just that: a warning of what may happen, rather than a statement of accomplished fact. The developments that have taken place in Swedish publishing could affect the rest of the Nordic publishing world, too - let's hope that doesn't happen, and as translators let's make some efforts to make sure that it doesn't.

See also:
Cornering the market
Detective Story
Detective Story - 2
Detective Story - 3
The missing midfield

Nordic historical novels

There aren't that many available in English. Considering the prodigious output of 19th and 20th century Scandinavian historical novelists like Jonas Lie, J.P. Jacobsen, Verner von Heidenstam , Sigrid Undset, Selma Lagerlöf, Knut Hamsun, Gunnar Gunnarsson, and nearer to our own time Väinö Linna, Ulla-Lena Lundberg and Carsten Jensen, it's surprising that more of their work hasn't been translated.

Individual concerns

This blog has now been running for all of four months. It evidently has a readership - 2,384 unique visits in that space of time is not bad for a minority interest blog, and Sitemeter shows that the visitors come not only from Scandinavia but also from locations in Australia, Malaysia, the U.S., Canada, Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, among others. But I can't help noticing that it's also almost alone in covering the field of Nordic writing in English translation. Apart from Scandinavian Books/Nordic Bookblog, who seem to concentrate most of their attention on the increasingly predictable area of Nordic crime writing, it doesn't look as though there may be many other English-language sites or blogs devoted to the subject. There are sites like Swedish Book Review, Books from Finland, and FILI, of course - but these mainly represent organizations of various kinds, either state-run or promoting professional interests.

When some of us left the SELTA Google Group discussions back in February and started Nordic Voices, I recall that Tom Geddes suggested that we should set up an alternative association for translators of Nordic - not just Swedish - literature. Yet with several months' experience of the blog now behind us, I can see that this is precisely what I don't want to do. In my opinion, approaching Nordic writing and its translation from an individual viewpoint, rather than as a member of a group or organization, is a more challenging and potentially more creative path to take.

In part I think this is because I feel that what we are trying to do here is detach the field of Nordic literature from the narrow circle of specialists, academics and translators where it normally ends up, and bring it to the attention of a wider public that may have little knowledge of Nordic life and language, or may view the subject of "Scandinavia" through preconceptions. Those preconceptions are often widespread, and mostly have the effect of blocking the realization that Nordic culture and literature are just as diverse and mixed as the rest of the world.

While "Nordic" writers tend to be based in the "North", they may also hail from a whole host of other geographic and cultural reference points, whether it's Hallgrímur Helgason writing about Stalinism from Manhattan, Siri Hustvedt describing life in Brooklyn, or Karmela Belinki, who says:

Karmela is Hebrew, OT, means "God's fruitful vineyard" (Mount Carmel in Israel). Belinki is Russian-Jewish and means "little white", probably from a river, which runs i.a. through Lithuania and parts of Belarus, where my paternal family stems from. I pronounce it Karméla Bélinki I consider myself mainly a Finland-Swedish writer, but I was brought up with multiple languages, Yiddish being one of them. I have also written and broadcast in Finnish, I was partly educated in the United Kingdom, and I am fluent in several other languages as well.

I think in the end this brings me back to the thought I was trying to express in an earlier post, where I said that I saw two strands in Nordic literature, and that for me the important one was the universal - or universalist - one.

We've chosen a particular cultural area (the Nordic one) as the focus for the blog - but the aim is probably a wider one: to present and consider literary work that may be new and unfamiliar to the English-speaking world, and to track the movement of its local essence out into a wider space where it speaks to everyone. I believe that can best be done on a one-to-one basis, through individual efforts rather than as the activity of a special interest group.

Herder and Hegel

Readers may like to note that 19th century German editions of the works of both Herder and Hegel can be accessed online - here and here. Of particular interest in relation to Nordic literature and its ideological antecedents, perhaps, are Herder's Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772), Selection from correspondence on Ossian and the songs of ancient peoples (1773), Of German Character and Art (with Goethe, 1773), Folk Songs (1778-79), and the dialogue Iduna (1796), in which the philosopher suggests that the Nordic gods may serve as the foundation of a new national German literature, replacing the myths and deities of Greek and Oriental antiquity.

Two strands in Nordic literature

Still following the thread that was prompted by the discussion of Greenlandic literature, and particularly by the examples and reflections contained in Karen Langgård's essay, I wonder whether the questions connected with the aspiration towards nationhood may not lie at the centre of the debate on Nordic literature itself.

The uncertainty about national role and identity has had a twofold effect on Nordic consciousness and culture. On the one hand, it has led to a preoccupation among Nordic authors and thinkers with issues of identity, society and community, sometimes expressed in religious terms, but more rooted in the ideas of Hegel, Marx and nineteenth century German sociology. On the other hand, much as in Russia, it has often inspired a reaction against those essentially collectivist concerns, leading to the birth of a kind of ethical universalism that derives from the ideals of the German enlightenment, in particular those expressed in the philosophy of Kant.

Just as the Russian classic authors - Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev - go beyond the limitations of the social and historical confusion of their age to create an essentially moral universe in which time and matter play a secondary though none the less vivid role, so the work of the great names of Nordic literature - Kierkegaard, Claussen, Blixen, Ibsen, Strindberg - inhabits a realm in which the ethical and existential concerns of the individual are transformed into a portrayal of all human life, perceived in the eye of the absolute. Perhaps this is the other side of the "religious" coin.

The two strands, the social-communal and the universal, are still present in Nordic literature today, although - just as in Russia during the twentieth century - the former has gained the upper hand. When an author like Pia Tafdrup describes herself not as a Danish poet, but a poet who happens to write in Danish, she is to some extent allying herself with the Nordic universalist tradition, though also with literary universalism everywhere, and with writers who fought the collectivist tyranny (the examples of Mandelstam, Tsvetayeva and Brodsky come to mind). And those Nordic authors who continue to seek their subjects and inspiration in the analysis of social and political issues are harking back to the uncertain murk of Herder, Hegel and nineteenth century nationalism, with its twentieth century consequences.

This is probably a gross oversimplification, but I think it's one that might be worth further inquiry.

Nordic or not

Last week there was news that Greenland may soon become a sixth Nordic state. The new form of strengthened self-government for the autonomous country which at present exists within the Kingdom of Denmark apparently contains an "independence option" which can be exercised at a future date.

However, there are questions: would Greenland really be a "Nordic" state? The country's indigenous inhabitants are Inuits, related to other Inuit groups in Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Language-wise there aren't any problems - although Greenlandic isn't an Indo-European tongue, neither is Finnish. But there are aspects of Greenland's history that cause some head-scratching: for example, in 1946 the United States offered to buy Greenland from Denmark for $100,000,000, but Denmark refused to sell. There is also the question of Erfalasorput, the national flag, which doesn't look very Nordic - no cross, but a Japanese-style circle/sun motif.

And what about literature? The list of Greenlandic authors doesn't seem to be a long one, and those who do exist are mainly poets not well known outside their native land. Magssanguaq Qujaukitsoq (b. 1977) has published one collection of poetry, Sisamanik teqeqqulik (The Four-Cornered One), which this year was Greenland's nomination for the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and was consequently translated into Danish. Reviews were mixed, to say the least, however: in Politiken, Mikkel Bruun Zangenberg was hard put to it to say a good word about the book, finding the poems lacking in literary quality and characterized by anti-consumerist and anti-colonial tub-thumping.

But perhaps the problem lies in the difficulty of translation? As Zangenberg pointed out, without a knowledge of Greenlandic, one has no way of knowing.

This seems a pity. If any of our readers can suggest some classic or contemporary Greenlandic writing in translation that might be suitable for our summer reading (the great sommarvila/sommerpause/kesätauko is almost upon us now), we would be pleased to hear about it.

See also: Modern Greenlandic Writing

Norwegian literary websites, events, organisations

Thanks to the Lillehammer Norwegian literary festival website, my attention has been drawn to a Norwegian online poetry magazine called Nypoesi. There is also a site called Forlaget Attåt, which has links to what is termed the Tekstallianse 2009. This website states (my tr.):

During the weekend of 21st and 22nd August, over 120 small presses from Scandinavia and beyond, festivals, magazines, organisations and networks will meet at Litteraturhuset (Oslo). Tekstallianse is a book fair and festival that aims to show the breadth and variety of small, medium-sized and more or less independent and idealistic players within the field of literature, music, the visual arts and theatre. Common to all exhibitors is the wish to establish an alternative to the cultural community represented by the larger publishing houses and newspaper editors.

A worthy aim. Let's see what it means in practice. One link here is to Litteraturhuset itself. This has a regular programme, a book café -- "Kafe Oslo" -- and a bookshop.

Another organisation is Norsk Forfattersentrum. From their website:

The Norwegian Writers' Centre" is an organization of Norwegian poets and fiction writers, founded in 1968 on the initiative of young Norwegian writers, in order to act as a linking body between writers and the general public. The Centre is not a writers’ union.

It is non-commercial. By granting an amount of 8 million NOK a year, the Ministry of Culture covers most of the operating costs. It

·works out its own arrangements and tours all over the country.

· keeps an office in Oslo and in 4 other cities (Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim, Tromsø).

Finally for this time, the website of the Norwegian PEN Club is here. This organisation awards the annual Ossietzky Prize that aims to promote freedom of expression.

"Short stories don't sell"

The rubric of this post is an old prejudice that British publishers have never quite abandoned. Once upon a time, every respectable magazine in Britain and the USA would have its weekly short story, a piece of fiction intended to bring contrast to the mundanity of the news.

But in Britain today, as far as I can see, there is little appetite for new, contemporary short stories of a literary type in publications that are sold in mainstream bookshops. Even for stories written in English. And publishers tend to shy away from collections of stories by one author, unless this author already has a monumental reputation.

When you look at webpages such as this one, you can be impressed by the number of publications listed. But you should beware of long lists where apples, pears, plums and doughnuts are all lumped together with little discrimination. So translations, already at a disadvantage, are bound to suffer. On that list there are serious publications such as London Magazine, Chapman and Stand. But some publications have a drum to beat or axe to grind, and if you subtract those, you are left with far fewer. When you read that Your Cat Magazine and Your Dog Magazine publish stories, you begin to wonder what the level of literary sophistication is. I get the feeling that the Story Website is keener to get on board as many people as possible, as opposed to fostering the short story as a subtle literary genre, in the footsteps of Katherine Mansfield, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, and so on.

And Nordic translations. The Norwegian author Frode Grytten (whose work I will be discussing in another post) is one Nordic author whose translations into English reflect this rather depressing trend. Grytten has published many short stories (collected in one volume) in Norway, plus one crime novel. His novel was snapped up immediately in the current British crime wave; but only one of his 103 stories has appeared in English, and this was, curiously, from a book of interconnected stories, rather than a self-standing one.

Do contemporary Nordic short story authors have a "valid entry visa" to the UK? Are they not kept away from our shores by a vicious circle: never heard of him, therefore not interested.

Until the fad of publishing short stories in general magazines, or ones devoted exclusively to short stories, returns to Britain, will all the Nordic authors writing short stories, in effect, be shut out of Britain? What is the solution? How can short stories from Europe as a whole be popularised in Britain, so that they are regarded as normal works of literature, not things exclusively for the Readers' Digest or for sci-fi aficionados? Should the Arts Council do more in this area?

Surely, our age of haste and short attention spans means that commuters could read short stories just as happily as thick novels. Not everyone wants to have to carry around electronic equipment to read a book on the train or bus, when you could buy a book of stories that does not rely on the presence of electricity. You may be able to cram a hundred books into a reading device, but you can't read a hundred books at once, and a book of 25 short stories would also give the same pleasure as it did to people in previous epochs.

Poetry - Britain and Scandinavia

Poetry features quite frequently on this blog, in translation of course. And most of what we translate here is contemporary poetry, i.e. what Nordic and Estonian poets are writing now, this century.

However, in mainstream cultural British discourse poetry appears to be an insecure recital of the names of Daffodil Wordsworth, Bi Shakespeare, Papist Donne and other poets who wrote centuries ago. Or they glide effortlessly over to a few contemporary bigshots like Bowell Motion, his mentor Parental Fuckup Larkin, Deathly Leamington Betjeman, Wife-Beater Hughes, and a few other terribly British names, regurgitated and -cycled ad nauseam. Plus a few Yanks, because they write in the same language as we do, to pad out the anthologies.

As well as the recital of names, there is the recital of poetry. Poetry appears to only come alive for Brits if read in a pub while hoi polloi are pushing past for drinks, chattering loudly about things banal and venal, while the poor versifier is straining to make herself heard.

I saw Griff Rhys Jones waxing wonderful about poesy the other night on TV, and now see in the Daily MP Exposograph an article by Simon Schama, also on poetry, linked in with the appearance of this latter guru next Tuesday, also on TV. But judging by what these two gents are spouting, you could not imagine that poetry exists beyond the saintlinesse of the English language, from Anglo-Saxon to rap. Nowhere would you even get an inkling that there is verse beyond Blighty, in the bowels of Europe.

Another nuttiness is when Brits oooh and aaah about the exotic species: the Woman Poet. Now we've got a Poet Laureate who is not only a woman, but also wants to swig the free port, and as a cunning linguist is maybe even prepared to tip the velvet. And Brits, who seem to have lost their compass regarding poetry, regard this as an-ever-so exotic-vibrant-exciting-novelatory mega-event.

What is so sad about the introversion of oh-so-many British readers is that they could discover perhaps hundreds of competent women poets if only they would cross the great water, as the I-Ching would have it, and look to the shores of Scandinavia and the Low Countries, plus Germany and France.

Many of the poets translated on this blog are women; some are even lesbian, or bi, or whatever. In Scandinavia, poetry is no longer the province of cigar-smoking bachelors in student clubs, as it may have been over there in the 19th century. In fact much good poetry is indeed written by women. Why are British publishers and readers so reluctant to have translated some of these women poets from Europe and beyond?

Why must English-only poets be tediously-endlessly promoted, as if poets are a home-grown species threatened with extinction, when there are already so many more in the many countries of Europe? It would do British poetry a world of good to have some cross-fertilisation with the Continentals. Cross-fertilisation implies two directions, not just for foreigners to copy great British models.

[Note: comments on this post are temporarily disabled]

Nordic poetry blogs and info-sites

Young Ny Tid cultural journalist Emma Strömberg has written a lively article about poetry blogs in the Nordic languages, though mainly in her mother-tongue, Swedish. The first thing Strömberg confronts the reader with in this article published last month is her own prejudices:

"... I do feel ashamed at having a snobbish [fisförnäm] attitude to poetry. Because I want to keep poetry at a high standard, a rare dish, something of a luxury."

She therefore looks at poetry blogs with what I would regard a healthy scepticism. She continues:

"So I am approaching all of this with a firm view: I am as decided and immoveable as a rock, ready to accept proof of what I already know. That general poetry forums are, yes, simply full of shit."

No beating about the bush, though she somewhat softens her attitude later in the article. At first she pours out all her prejudices about poetry chatsites and blogs which are filled with naïve adolescent poetry, with clichés and catharsis. She does admit, however, that the internet does afford "the masses" a chance to participate in what risks becoming a dying art.

Emma Strömberg briefly reviews five poetry blogs:

poeter.se

This is an open forum with a relatively sober outlook. This open approach can, nevertheless, attract cyber-graffiti.

sockerdricka.nu

This open forum seems to concentrate more on layout than content. The name itself is ominous.

dikt360.se

This is an edited forum, which Strömberg says sometimes publishes interesting interviews. I (Eric) feel that this is perhaps the best and most comprehensive of these first three blogsites here, as it has a lot of reviews of poetry collections plus interviews.

litlive.se litlive.no litlive.dk

These three interlinked websites constitute a literary calendar about poetry events in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, respectively.

bloggskrift.blogspot.com

This one is where you can read and comment on texts from the first ever Finland-Swedish creative writing course carried out in the form of a blog. This website also gives further links to four Swedish-speaking literary associations in Finland: ones in Nyland, Åboland, Ostrobothnia and the umbrella organisation Finlands svenska littteraturföreningar.

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These websites are, despite their various weaknesses, a good way of seeing what is being produced by way of poetry on the internet.