Interview on Icelandic Poetry

Recently one Robin Vaughan-Williams contacted me with a few questions for an article he’s writing for a british poetry magazine. The answers I gave are here below – this is very much thinking aloud, as you’d answer in a spoken-word interview (although conducted through email), and I’ve not cleaned it much up at all.

> How well-respected do you think poetry is as an artform in Iceland?

It depends very much on the categorization of “poetry”. The respect might be more tied to individuals or groups of individuals. I think there’s a deep respect for the older elite – Þorsteinn frá Hamri, Hannes Pétursson, and the twentiethcentury “modernists” (Icelandic modernists are more of the prufrock-type than the Cantos-type, let alone Dada, cummings or Stein types). The spectrum of respect goes from there to the “hagyrðingar” – literally: ‘craftsman of words’ – which are generally old farmer-type gentlemen who write occasional quatrains. Sometimes one writes (or speaks) the first two lines, and the other must finish it with correct rhyme and alliteration. Younger poets (‘ungskáld’ – used mostly for those under thirty) are generally spoken of in a slightly condescending manner – i.e. ‘it’s very exciting to follow the younger poets, but I fear they lack the patience and skill necessary for …’ etc. These people are also mentioned categorically (as a group) when the periodical shrieks of ‘poetry’s dead’ start being heard, and are habitually accused of not being ‘new’ enough (apparently radical experimentalism isn’t new enough either, since it’s just old to be new – if you get my drift – new is out, but that doesn’t mean old is in either, it just means you pick on what suits you).

>Are writers of poetry comfortable about describing themselves as poets, or are they more likely to feel slightly embarrassed?

It differs from person to person. Some people see it as if you needed to be ordained a poet from a higher power (anyone from the god of beauty, – either Baldur the Beautiful or Óðinn the Wise – to an editor at one of the larger publishing houses), others that it’s simply anyone who makes an effort to deal with poetry – and some of course feel that certain efforts, although called poetry, aren’t poetry at all. Some might say that poetry that doesn’t rhyme isn’t poetry (these people still exist in Iceland, and you’ll even see an article or two every year in morgunblaðið, claiming this – bear in mind that or ‘modernists’ didn’t appear until the mid-fifties, and at that time not rhyming was considered a revolutionary idea in poetry), while others might make the claim that a certain dealing-with-language is necessary for poetry, and a limerick perhaps, or a nicely worded sentence cut into short lines, isn’t ‘really’ poetry.

>Are poets popularly seen as being in tune with the present, shapers or the future, or mired in the past?

I think they are popularly seen as being mired in the past. Of course they aren’t popularly seen at all. Those that read the respected Icelandic poetry, I think, would say that they deal in eilífðarmál (eternal matters) – and that poetry shouldn’t be of time at all. The more iconoclastic would say that poetry in Iceland mostly deals in nothing, truisms and cliché put forth in pretty (often archaic or semi-archaic) language. When the crisis hit in october people started pulling out classics, working-class poetry by Steinn Steinarr for instance, but the most interesting thing about it to me, is that people immediately started reacting to it, remixing it – switching nouns and verbs to make it fit to the present situation. So instead of Í draumi sérhvers manns er fall hans falið (Everyone’s downfall is implicit in their dreams), it became Í banka sérhvers manns er fall hans falið (Everyone’s downfall is implicit in their banks). So what happened is that alot of people reacted by resorting to classical poetry, but treating it with a similar sense as the present experimentalists in Icelandic poetry – a language-materialist stance, if you will. Most of these efforts resulted in, in my honest opinion, pretty trite work (and of course it was written by ‘absolute beginners’)– but they do indicate a stance towards poetry and language that is shared with the (mostly) marginalized experimental poets and a fondness (rather than respect) for the classics.

> Does poetry have a special role to play in Iceland because Icelandic is a relatively small language, in terms of the number of its speakers? Is it closely connected to people’s sense of national identity,

Special role, is a difficult concept to grasp for me – but I’d say it was important, although more or less important than in larger countries, I can’t say. It’s certainly part of the mythology of Iceland (99% of what gets said about Iceland and Icelanders by themselves (and by association foreigners) is halftruths at best). The language was purified in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, by the nationalist movement (whose leaders were in great part poets) – so danish influence was cleaned out and Icelandic went a couple of centuries backwards in terms of vocabulary, with neologisms for newer foreign words to boot. Dialects were more or less done away with as well. Spelling was made uniform in the beginning of the 20th century, and has stayed mostly the same since (the Z was removed in the seventies, and some other minor adjustments have been made). So what this does is it builds a bridge that extends towards the Sagas and the Eddas, but to do so the bridge passes over alot of the 18th and 17th century writing – with it’s ununiform spelling, vocabulary and weirdnesses (the Sagas and Eddas are of course harder to read – but usually people are just happy and proud enough to be able to understand anything at all – and as far as that goes, my theory of us having a better understanding for 17th and 18th century literature, had we not gone through such rigorous nationalism, is a theory built more on feeling than research). A lot of people even claim to have difficulty reading Laxness, since he had the misfortune of learning to read and write before spelling was made uniform – but all it is is a couple of extra accents on a few letters. Icelanders are used to their language being very uniform, and they respond badly to any breakingoftherules. And therefore they are impatient with foreigners, for example, who are trying to learn the language, and often switch quickly to english (this is getting better though, as the people get more used to foreigners, who had literally no presence in Iceland up until 15 years ago, maybe – only 10 years ago I remember hearing about foreigners not being interviewed on the state radio because of their accents).

So – purist, uniformist and nationalist language, without dialects, loan-words or accents, foreign or domestic. It’s a bit of a prison – but it also means there’s work to be done for poets. It’s an interesting language for a poet to work in. Like fiddling with virgins.

> or supported by any national cultural programmes?

Actually, the national cultural programmes care more for prose and fine arts than they do for poetry. Poetry is very much seen as a hobby, by the system – a lot of Icelandic writers have spent their twenties being poets, and turning to prose later, when they finish school, get stipendiums and turn ‘serious’. Almost every major icelandic novelist’s first book was a book of poetry. It’s seen as a training ground, you hone your wordskills in poetry, and then turn to prose when your muscles are up for it. Which tends to relegate poetry to the space of ‘stylistic excercise’ – which is what alot of it is, in Iceland.

The institutions – the writer’s stipendium for instance – seems to be more favorable towards those that have written novels, than those who only write poetry. I should stress that this is only a feeling I have, I’ve not made any research on this.

>
> Is writing poetry popular as an activity, and is there much of an audience for poetry?

Sometimes I get the feeling almost everybody does it, in some capacity. Either you write rhymes, or you write confessionalisms for the drawer, or you occasionally put down some lyrical modernism, or you’ve written song lyrics, or you collect funny news story double-entendres, or you doodle letters, or you do one-line throwbacks to current events on your blog , or you compose neologisms– etc. And if you take into account the population of Iceland, shitloads of poetry gets published. 105 books of or about poetry in 2008 – which would make a 105.000 in the US, relatively speaking. This is shitloads, obviously.

But then again, Icelanders are more interested in writing poetry than reading it. And Icelanders are mostly oblivious to foreign poetry – even those deep in the cultural world, are mostly ignorant of what’s happening in our neighboring countries. They’ll know some of the biggies – 20th century greats like Edith Södergran, Tomas Tranströmer, Tor Ulven and Dan Turell – but are hardly even interested in the contemporary poets, and the cultural media turns a blind eye (mostly, not completely) to events like the Nýhil Poetry Festival, where the biggest (younger) contemporaries show up – Anna Hallberg, Leevi Lehto, Ida Börjel, Lone Hörslev, Catarina Gripenberg, these are names known to the Scandinavian poetry community (and sometimes their worth is disputed, but they’re still known) but not in Iceland.

And yet, I must mention, that despite everything – people do show up at poetry events like the Nýhil festival. But my feeling is they’re mostly interested in the domestic poets.

>How is it disseminated; i.e. through the printed word (books, magazines), through public readings (poetry readings and performances), or in private circles (family and other social gatherings)?

Magazines don’t print alot of poetry in Iceland, and those that do usually go out of business quickly. There’s always some poetry in Tímarit Máls og menningar (which comes out 4X a year) and in Lesbókin, the saturday cultural section of the newspaper Morgunblaðið – although the latter seems to mostly use it for filling up space, where filling is needed, as the poetry printed seems to be picked for it’s width and length, rather than it’s quality. Stína, a magazine started a couple of years ago, prints more poetry, but I’ve not seen it for awhile – maybe they’re belly up by now. Also Jón frá Bægisá publishes translations, and Són as well – but these have very little distribution, and a traditionalist tendency that seems to make me stay away most of the time.

As mentioned, books are printed – most of poetry is printed privately or through smaller publishing houses. The bigger publishing houses tend to be scared of it, as even when it doesn’t translate as a pure loss for them, it’s too much bother for too little money. Nýhil and Nykur, which almost exclusively print poetry, are usually responsible for about 5-10 books a year each.

We have very little tradition for reading-series, and the ones we’ve had weren’t really much good. There are events now and again, mostly to celebrate the publication of a book, but otherwise not much. The stage you wanna stand on is The Nýhil Festival – it’s probably the biggest audience you’ll get (I’m not sure, but I’d guess 300-400 each of the two nights).

I don’t think there’s much poetry at all at smaller social gatherings, and if there is, it’s of the hagyrðingar-variety.

>
> Is there much influence from poetry in other languages, and do Icelandic poets always write in Icelandic, or do some of them write in foreign languages in order to reach a wider audience?

Curiously enough, back in the days the nationalists would sometimes write in danish. And writing in a foreign language was more or less seen as the only alternative to literature being a mere hobby until Halldór Laxness came along. Writing in english is scarce among those that take it seriously (although many teenagers tend to find english easier for emotions – perhaps ‘cause it’s less serious, more melodramatic, more the language of pop, rock and movies – where most of them get their dramatic inputs), and I’d dare say that the only ones writing in other languages are at least half of the respective nationality.

Personally I’ve tried to translate some of my poems into english – but then alot of my poetry is very sound-based, so ‘understanding’ it doesn’t necessarily demand of you that you know all the words (I also tend to speak so fast that what I’m saying isn’t necessarily heard). I’ve read quite alot at festivals in Europe and NorthAmerica, but I usually just read in Icelandic – and still they love me!

> Is poetry quite a unified scene in Iceland these days, or are there a number of groups of writers that have distinct programmes, themes, or styles of writing?

Esthetically, it’s pretty uniform, although it’s factional in a more personal manner. There are two groups of poets active in Iceland, Nykur and Nýhil – and it’s hard for me to be objective in judging them, since I’m a founding member of Nýhil. I think most would agree that Nýhil is more radical, that there’s more experimental work coming from Nýhil, and more profanity, actually – since some of the poets there are dealing in both the language of transgression and the language of the body – one critic called it the poetics of bodily fluids. Nýhil also takes more time to discuss poetry and esthetics, and publishing books on such matters. It’s probably also more elitist – I think it’s harder to publish with Nýhil than Nykur. Nykur might be more interested in confessional poetics – and democratisation of poetry. It’s losely connected to the site ljóð.is, where anyone can post their poetry, and you can suggest a ‘poem of the day’ etc. While Nýhil is losely connected to the site tregawott.net (currently not online – but you can see the last issue at www.norddahl.org/tregawott/leikur/forsida.html – it should be up again in a month or so). Tregawott.net is an edited site with translations, essays, new poetry etc. and definitely not open to just anything.

Both groups are somehow outside of the mainstream of ‘recognised’ poets, since neither adheres to the chain-of-command for ordaination from the larger publishing houses. This is evident in a mild irritation that sometimes surfaces in the more mainstream cultural media. There’s a bit of a rivalry between Nýhil and Nykur, that tends to stay under the surface though – mostly we’re amicable, but Nýhil has dealt Nykur a few jabs for of it’s overly positive stance towards all poetry and Nykur has dealt some to Nýhil for it’s overly negative stance towards most poetry.

>Could you mention a few poets you are particularly interested in, and what attracts you to their writing?

I’m interested in a lot of poets – I take it you’re mostly thinking of Icelandic ones – I’ll try to stay away from Nýhil and Nykur poets here. There’s some concrete poetry from the 80’s and 90’s that I enjoy – Óskar Árni Óskarsson, Gyrðir Elíasson and Ísak Harðarson most notably. Sigfús Bjartmarsson’s book Zombí is underrated and wonderful. Kristín Ómarsdóttir has a wonderful weirdness to her language, as does Þórunn Erlu-Valdimarsdóttir (who’s affiliated with Nýhil, although of an older generation). Bragi Ólafsson and Sjón have some european streaks that attract me – a kind of semi-surrealism, although very much less revolutionary in spirit. Anton Helgi Jónsson published some interestingly iconoclastic books in the eighties, but has been mostly silent since then – aside from a few experimental pieces and visual pieces on his homepage (www.anton.is) – but he actually just won a big prize for a new poem. Jóhamar is one of the most powerful voices – an angry, bitter man in poetry, somehow, very experimental, and very marginalized, although his last book got rave reviews (but I fear he’s still marginalized). Bjarni Bernharður’s books where he deals with a murder he committed in the early eighties, through poetry, are sometimes a very difficult and an interesting read. Þórarinn Eldjárn’s children rhymes are wild. Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttirs Höfuð konunnar (The head of the woman) is a dancing feminist revolution filled with snippets of sarcastic sniping. Hallgrímur Helgason’s translation of Ice-T is superb.

The above are all living and mostly current. Twentieth century: Sigfús Daðason (our TS Eliot meets Paul Eluard), Steinn Steinarr (our Eliot in Prufrock meets working-class rhymer), Dagur Sigurðarson (closest thing we had to a beat-poet), Þórbergur Þórðarson was a great satirist of romantic poetry, and more.

Older: Jónas Hallgrímsson, (one of the aforementioned nationalist), importer of foreign verse forms and innovator of words; Látra-Björg, master of sonoric verse; Vatnsenda-Rósa, our greatest love-poet; Æri-Tobbi, a traditional poet who lost his ‘gift’ after angering god and got turned into a ‘mad’ sound-poet; Snorri Sturluson, goes without saying.

My closest friends: Steinar Bragi’s Litlikall is a speedmanic study in careless attacking language, and perhaps internet language; Jón Örn Loðmfjörð’s digital experiments are groundwork; Kristín Eiríksdóttir is lyrical beauty engendered; Ófeigur Sigurðsson’s poetics are infernal, and he’s the only user of archaism’s I can read; Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson’s take on Dante’s Inferno as a drunken binge through Reykjavík was verse, and totally got away with it; Ingólfur Gíslason is the sarcastic conscience of contemporenity, a Sigfús Daðason for our times – and there’s loads of people on the verge of doing something great.

British poets – I like Sean Bonney, Billy Childish and Famous Seamus is kind on dreary eves. Ian Hamilton Finlay is wonderful – particularly Honey by the Water. Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan. Basil Bunting. Sean O’Brien. Maggie O’Sullivan. Caroline Bergvall is sort of a “british poet” I guess, although Norwegian-French (based in London, I think, for most of her career).

I’m probably forgetting tons of poets I like, and will probably beat me over the head for it.

>(I would be interested to know, for example, what kind of reception Nyhil and your own writing had in Iceland).

The critical reception of my own work has been from reserved to great, and public reception has been from horrendous to mindblowing. I think there’s generally more positivity in the Icelandic literature debate than there is negativity, naturally so since most people know eachother on a personal level – it’s hard to find someone ‘in’ literature who doesn’t more or less know everybody else ‘in’ literature. This breeds both a type of incest (esthetically) and a type of amicability (at least publicly – there’s a lot of talking-behind-backs, in my experience). There’s also a kind of cowardice – most people would rather not review a book than say something overtly negative (since negativity comes at the prize of (a quite natural) backlash). And nobody wants to be the person who railed on Tulips & Chimneys when it was published, only to be laughing stock almost a century later. So we become cowardly instead, and don’t say what we actually feel (as if the reviewers of Tulips & Chimney were ‘wrong’ not to like it – as if poetry was a question of being right and wrong about predicting who ‘wins the race for the canon’).

As seems to be with all ‘groups’ a great deal of the attention Nýhil gets is negative, while the attention the work of it’s members get is positive. It goes something like this: “I don’t like Nýhil but I think his/her work is great” – “(S)he is so much better than the other Nýhilists” – I know this same reaction from the language-materialists in Sweden, involved with the magazine OEI, and the Flarf-collective in New York. I don’t know what it means, exactly, but the collective response towards a poetry collective tends to be more negative, while response towards individual works tend to be more positive. These are of course no absolutes – but so far I’ve never seen a “I really like Nýhil/OEI/Flarf but his/her work sucks”. Maybe it’s easier to relegate the negativity you don’t dare utter about individuals to a group of individuals – but of course this can be a problem for the group, especially one interested in constantly recruiting new good people (like Nýhil), when despite the positive reputation of the members, the group becomes seen as a negative stamp rather than a positive or neutral one. One could be tempted to see this as literary society spitting out the political structure (so it can resume it’s role as chief-ordainer of beautiful poets) – and maybe I will, yes I think I’ll just do that. Think of me what you will.

All the best,
Eiríkur

Tags: Caroline Bergvall, Iceland, Ida Börjel, Leevi Lehto, Nýhil, Poetry, Sjón, Translation

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