Anthologist: Nestoras Poulakos
Translation: Antonis Bogadakis
Preface: Hanna Stjernfeldt
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Arazo Arif, Maj Ivfjall, Gabriel Itkes-Sznap, Elin Kvicklund, Filip Lindberg, Daniel Mårs, Emil Boss, Elis Burrau, Merima Dizdarević, Hanna Riisager, Robert Rogvall, Sara Sheikhi, Felicia Stenroth, David Zimmerman
Find the book here
The discussion about whether poetry is being pushed to the margins of Swedish culture goes back for quite some time. If we take a look at the prefaces of Swedish poetry compilations from the ‘60’s onwards, we will find a constantly growing concern about the future of poetry. Needless to say, the conditions for poetry have gone through some substantial changes over the course of the last fifty years. Financial support for poetry books and literary reviews has dwindled. Poetry reviews are sporadically published in the cultural columns of Swedish newspapers, while important literary magazines, like Bonniers litterära magasin, once the central meeting point for new authors, no longer exist. In short, the necessary infrastructures for poetry publications have been drastically reduced. Nevertheless, while major publishing houses have limited their poetry releases – especially in the case of debuting poets – the activities of minor outfits has bloomed into prominence. Small publishing houses, periodicals and blogs join forces and collaborate in the framework of literary festivals, public readings and seminars; at the same time, there has been a great amount of poetic exchanges between Scandinavian poets of either gender. These exchanges largely take place in websites, social media and other online platforms, which have shaped the new literary environment. For a long time now, the initiative for presenting and translating poetry from abroad has been taken by small literary magazines and publishing houses, and many consider these presentations and publications to be more important for the development of Swedish poetry than Sweden’s own domestic poetic production. Creative writing schools, such as those in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, are now an integral institutional part of this network of poets and contribute to the consolidation of poetry’s position and the development of a wider framework for Scandinavian poetry. In this account, despite poetry’s marginalization and the shrinking of the reading audience, Swedish poetry survives on, building its own space and existing in constant motion, interspersed and diverse – and for this reason, not so easily accessible.
This anthology features Greek translations of 14 poetic voices, each currently an active part of the Swedish poetry scene. The common denominator for most of these poets is the fact that they were born during the ‘90’s and made their debut in Swedish literature over the course of the recent years. Some of them are currently preparing their debuts in major publishing houses, while others have already published several books; among them, however, are poets who publish their works independently on the internet, in printed or online magazines, or in smaller publishing houses.
The work of Filip Lindberg (born in 1990), with its scholarly underpinnings, is clearly influenced by conceptual and experimental art originating from the poetic wave of the first decade of the 21st century, spearheaded by the Swedish literary magazine OEI. Heavily influenced by the insights of post-structuralism and the movement of linguistic materialism, as advocated by the American magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, a significant portion of poetry composed during that decade is devoted to the deconstruction of linguistic, social and literary norms. The concept of poetic metaphor is entirely absent from Lindberg’s work. In the same vein as concretists, he turns every page of his book into a barren landscape of solitary points, which, through the poem’s form, become subject to a series of repetitions and barely perceptible differentiations, in which the experience of stillness, along with a pulsating pain, are registered in terms of both language and sound.
Still, while it is possible to trace the influences of the poetic legacy of 2010 in Lindberg’s work, other poets seem to be driven by trends that are not committed to unifying practice with poetic theory. A current global poetic trend is the composition of poetry directly integrated into the flow and daily buzz of online platforms. These so-called Twitter poems are typified by elusive and stark expression, a low-key style devoid of sentimentalities, yet often with an ironic spirit and relation to texts. Elis Burrau (born in 1992) holds a central place in the poetic generation who, in the context of scandinavianness, goes beyond merely using the available digital channels to distribute his poetry: he also allows these channels to shape his poetry. His constant presence dominates the virtual and physical space of poetry by means of an incessant mass production of the “bad side” of this lyrical binary, through which, on the one hand, he seeks – most of the time – stylistic fertilization through externalized and internalized idioms and unexpected twists, while on the other hand, allows these divergences to lead him to existential depths. His poems, much like the poet himself, move at the same pace, using life moments as an initial point of reference. To a certain degree, his poetry can be called existential; at the same time, however, it is social and talkative, quotidian and humorous, in a manner reminiscent of poems by the New York School of Poets, like Frank O’ Hara and John Ashbery.
Taking into account the fact that Burrau has already authored several books, one could claim that he among the established poets of this anthology. This is not the case with Robert Rogvall, whose poems are perhaps the most “wayward” of all. Even if a part of Rogvall’s poetry is more closely identified with the spacetime of the internet and with poetic attempts similar to those of Burrau, Rogvall’s poems contain several particularly romantic and grandiose elements. Poems like “Archers”, “Life Points” and “Deep Political Analysis” come across as contemporary chivalry poems taking place in a videogame.
In a manner similar to Burrau and Rogvall, the poems of the Swedish-American Maj Ivfjall are typified by the elements of the short form of a tweet; her poetry revolves around romantic and worldly themes merged with elements and references from everyday life, fashion and contemporary pop culture. The images of stardust, moonmilk and plush pink poodles in Ivfjall’s poetry have been influenced by gourlesque, a form of poetry and art that became very popular among the members of Dockhaveri, the somewhat newly-assembled feminist and writing collective and publishing house. In this context, female accessories and characteristics are used in a manner that transgresses commonly established norms, to a degree that makes them grotesque, with the ultimate goal of experimenting with the current norms and investigating the development of a female identity. The poetry compilation “För Kvalia” by Hana Riisager is based on the same principles. This collection of poems, which is based on philosophical theories on perception, begins from a mental experiment in which the scientist Mary, who has lived all her life in a room without colors, steps out into the real world for the first time; the world, with its full colors, juxtaposes ego with subjective perception through the external point of view: the image of the virgin, the goddess, the young girl, the doll and the mother. The poems collected in “För Kvalia” are characterized by the narrative of violent femininity recoiling within its own image and showing the possibility – or impossibility – of existing within this image. Arazo Arif also touches the subject of female identity and sexuality, although her point of reference is violence towards the human body. Her poems acquire meaning through their proximity with the sounds of a word and by the construction of the poem itself. With absolute accuracy and concentration, full of atonality and tone colors, Arif’s poetry narrates the impact of sexual violence on the body and soul. The poetry of Daniel Mårs also revolves around themes of bodily violence from the perspective of queer poetry, incorporating the concepts of desire and sexuality through the use of a language which, as in the previous instance, is steeped in strong references to the animalistic and the grotesque.
So far, we have mentioned the new trends in contemporary Swedish poetry. At the same time, however, there are poetic voices that adhere to a more classical and romantic poetry style. Their verses build on the traditional linguistic imagery, drawing their materials from nature, which revolves around the lyrical subject, leaving the internal world to reflect itself on the external. David Zimmerman employs a dreamlike language, colored by modernism, whose underpinnings denote a dystopian echo. His poetry could be regarded as a discreet critique of culture, an elegy in the landscape of a fractured world. This linguistic imagery, moving from the climactic to the everyday and personal, also evident in the less embellished, yet clearly demarcated poetic writings of Elin Kvicklund and Felicia Stenroth. The common denominator for these three poetic voices is the manner with which they employ the influence of light in their poetry, or, in other words, how light is used to illustrate the experience of pain and mourning in the verses.
The majority of poets in this anthology, regardless of gender, use the pages of the poems in a conventional, well-recognizable way. Nevertheless, some poets go beyond these limitations and directly apply the practices of performance and stage arts and their distinctive application of sound and image. The poems of Emil Boss, which employ a different format than the book, serve as a characteristic example of this type of poetry. Boss has established himself as a worker-poet and author of political texts since his debut in 2011. His recent poetry compilation Acceleration (2017) was printed in the form of a cashier roll. Boss participates in this anthology with an extract from this conceptually oriented poetry compilation, which comments on the often irrational way with which the language of optimized production objectifies labor and people alike. All the same, in the context of contemporary Swedish poetic production, it would be impossible to leave out oral speech with political and activist connotations, on account of the fact that this sort of speech is currently more appealing to the audience more than reading poetry from a book. The poetic language of Sara Sheikhi is a fine example of this practice; Sheikhi, for the most part, fully utilizes oral reading, thus intensifying the changes in the poem’s rhythm through the voice and physical presence of the poet. In Sheikhi’s poetry, anger for the injustices of the world is transformed into a fiery language, in which rhyme and rhythm become essential elements of the poem’s form. Merima Dizdarević uses the same oral tone, yet with a more derisive mood, to describe the gap between generations and human mentality and loneliness in cities and non-urban landscapes.
Gabriel Itkes-Sznap is a poet who clearly stands out in this anthology, participating with an extract from his critically lauded 2015 debut “Tolvfingertal” (Twelve-Fingered Speech). Itkes-Sznap can be described as a poet at the forefront of poetry that, over the past few years, talks about family, memory, legacy and violence, often bringing to mind Paul Celan. The often pastoral tone of Itkes-Sznap’s poems explores the resonant dimensions of poetry, in a manner reminiscent of Ann Jäderlund, Anna Hallberg and Aase Berg.
Due to the fact that the poetry scene is really small, it is nowadays difficult to divide poetry into strict schools, and even more difficult to classify and generalize the various emerging poetic voices. This anthology merely presents a selection from the melting pot of Swedish poetry, using examples of poems whose main themes are family and legacy, body and flesh, sexuality and violence, feminist writing and writing in the framework of a collective and the digital forms of communication. While this anthology addresses topics of political conscience, it also dares to maintain a comical and playful tone. The great devotion, interest and self-confidence found among current young poets are signs of hope, and their participation in this anthology proves that the Swedish poetry scene is both multifaceted and alive.
Hanna Stjernfeldt