Here you can here a couple of the poems on the CD performed live at the Days of Poetry and Wine in Slovenia last august.

List of poems

Swing Ding (Deng Xiaoping) 0:43
Batista 0:53
Bólar á Bólívar 2:38
Maó! Maó! Maó! 1:28
Djúgasvíli 1:55
Li Peng! Li Bang Bang! 0:42
Nguyễn Sinh Cung frá Hoàng Trù 0:20
Pol Pot (pantún) 0:56
Ra Che! Ra Che! 0:41
Mahathir Múhameð (pantún) 1:28
Eitt allsherjar ógurlega mikið 1:23
Naglasúpa I-VI 7:36
Heidi (fyrir Manga) 1:48
Vitnað í Ngin Tom 2:18
Helvetti (poem by Rita Dahl) 3:40
Ástir og ananas 3:54
Norrænar bókmenntir 1:12
Varir skáldsins 1:18
Til þess er það varðar 1:18
Hnoða blóm 5:47
Hvort sé rétt að leika Guð í þessu máli 4:38
Iceland Report on the Observance of Standards and Codes 3:37
Sjö sje á sjó-sjó 1:13
Kennara með köldu blóði 2:08
Besta orðið mitt 0:48
Ég á ekki orð 3:32
Höpöhöpö Böks 4:04
Lygi og regla 1:16
The Crisis Sonnet 1:15
Úr órum Tobba 6:41

And here you can order and download:

CD and/or download

Download €3.00 CD and download €7.00

The physical book can be ordered at the poEsia web.

It can also be downloaded as a pdf, mobi (for kindle) or epub (for ipad or sony reader) – no strings, but free donation apreciated (5-15 euro suggested).

BOOBY BE QUIET Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

These youthfully exuberant essays on translation, innovation, performance, and audience are compelling, delightful, and often funny: illuminating as Reykjavik white nights and sharp as the skate blade of a North American racing champion. Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl redefines the issue of poetry and national language in a brilliant and transformative essay that is the centerpiece of the collection. His impatience with the tried and true is infectious. One of the most engaged and enthusiastic works of poetics in recent years.

– Charles Bernstein, author of All the Whiskey in Heaven (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2010), Attack of the Difficult Poems (University of Chicago Press, 2011) amongst other books.

Norðdahl’s essays are brilliant vivisections of contemporary poetry and its problems, filtered through the prism of Iceland’s 2008 economic collapse — a close cousin of our own so-called “economic downturn.” The kitschy, nostalgia-driven “future economies” of both contemporary money culture and poetry culture are closely linked here (and elsewhere): ” . . . the present worships an outdated past, even at the cost of a living present.” As poets we may be working toward a goal of “fame” in the twilight of imagination — and, as citizens, working toward “affluence” in the twilight of capitalism — but if we identify the importance of the living moment as “the only eternity that lasts, without pause,” at least one of us may yet become that “he or she who affects . . . the entire critical mass of moments we call eternity” — beyond the mirage-like glow of “fame.” Norðdahl’s lively essays also introduce us to (perhaps) heretofore unexplored global poetries old and new in the most entertaining way, and leave us pondering a few delightful scenarios: “Imagine a poem so robust and resourceful that it could survive humanity . . . the nuclear dust finally settles and all that’s left of mankind is poetry.” Considering how long poetry’s been around, that’s probably what’s going to happen anyway. But in case you’re wondering what a poetry that robust might look like, there may be some presentiments of it right here.

— Sharon Mesmer, author of Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books, 2008) and The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose, 2008).

The cover of IWF! IWF! OMG! OMG!

Dear friends.

Next saturday I will be participating in the Zebra Poetry Film Festival schedule at the Gothenburg book fair. The Zebra crew will play some of last year’s films, including my Höpöhöpö Böks, and me and Maria Silkeberg (who also has a film in the program) will be reading some poems.

But the Gothenburg book fair is only a warm-up for the madness of Frankfurt. Iceland is the “honoured guest” at the world’s largest book fair this year and I and an airplane full of writers, poets and assorted literati will be participating. The book fair will coincide with the release of my first poetry book in german translation “IWF! IWF! OMG! OMG!”, from kozempel&timm on october 10th.

This is what my program looks like:

THURSDAY / 13.10.
16:00 Performance and book presentation at “Büchergilde Frankfurt”, (An der Staufenmauer 9, S- and U-Bahn: Konstabler Wache)
19:00 Performance at “Iceland Nights” at Eulengasse (Seckbacher Landstraße 16, U4 Seckbacher Landstraße)

FRIDAY / 14.10.
19:00 Soundperformance with Monika Golla and Nikolaus Heyduck at AusstellungsHalle 1A (Schulstraße 1A/ U 1/2/3 Südbahnhof or U 4/5 Römer)

SATURDAY / 15.10.
12:30 Messe / Isländischer Pavillon
16:00 Messe / “Das blaue Sofa” with Þórdís Björnsdóttir and Andri Snær Magnason
20:00 Gegenbuchmasse (Café Exzess, Leipziger Straße 91, U4/U5: Dom/Römer)

IWF! IWF! OMG! OMG! is a selection of poems from various books, 66 pages long, translated by Jón Bjarni Atlason and Alexander Sitzman, illustrated by Franziska Schaum. It can be pre-ordered at www.tubuk.de.

Around the same time a collection of essays and columns about poetry and literature, Booby, Be Quiet!, will come out from poEsia in Finland. The book (which is in english) contains various articles and lectures as well as my poetry columns for the Reykjavík Grapevine, 2009-2011. It also contains two divine blurbs, of which these are merely short excerpts:

“One of the most engaged and enthusiastic works of poetics in recent years.”
- Charles Bernstein

and

“Norðdahl’s essays are brilliant vivisections of contemporary poetry and its problems”
- Sharon Mesmer

Last but not least, I will be participating in the Oslo Poetry festival 12. – 14. november, with some readings and some video poetry (more details announced later!)

I hope you all are well,
Eiríkur

Ps. here you can see Dúó Harpverk and Tui Hirv perform Páll Ragnar Pálsson’s composition to my poem Hyperbolic Inoculation: (they have recently recorded this along with a piece based on its sister poem, Parabolic inoculation)

With the hostile takeover of triviality in popular media and popular art, perhaps poets have forgotten about fun, about charm, about joy, about attitude, about intensity, about popular iconoclasm, about naughty words, about the beautiful horniness — and driven anything that might attract an audience looking for something other than (supposed) supreme intelligence out of their poetry and into the waste basket of failed work, never to see the light of a backlit gadget screen (nevermind print or e-ink).

Sharon Mesmer (author of Annoying Diabetic Bitch amongst other contemporary masterpieces) talked to ME! At her new blog: Dubious Labia. (dubiouslabia.wordpress.com). Yay!

Today’s Top Stories!

Number one:
Next week I’ll be in Basel, Switzerland, to present my novel Poison for Beginners in German translation (still looking for an english publisher!). The event will take place in Literaturhaus Basel, Barfüssergasse 3, at 8 PM next wends, March 2.

Number two:
Poison for Beginners will be published in Sweden by Rámus Press – the contracts are, so to speak, in the mail (knock on wood). They’re planning to publish it in the spring of 2012.

Number three:
I now have an author page at PennSound – http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Norddahl.php – This pleases me immensely, as I am a great fan of the archive.

Number four:
If I should forget to send a reminder (I tend to forget) then be forewarned that I’ll be in Manchester on april 15 along with Phil Minton, Maggie O’Sullivan and the sound poetry duo Ben Gwilliam and Phil Davenpart. Carol Watts, Simon Smith and Sarah Boothroyd will contribute with sound-poetry interventions. The event is called The Language Moment and it’s the opening event for The Text Festival: www.textfestival.com.

Number five:

Katharina Thiel wrote about Poison for Beginners in Kreuzberg Liest and said (amongst other things): Up until now I could only imagine that great writers like Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl lived and wrote in Iceland […] a book for all humans and all that wish to become human.“

(In German: Dass in Island großartige Autoren wie Eiríkur Örn Norddahl leben und schreiben, konnte ich bislang nur erahnen. [...] Ein Buch für Menschen und alle, die es werden wollen.)

Yay!

Number six:

This coming autumn a book of my columns and essays in English, Booby, Be Quiet!, will be published by poEsia press, Finland. Most of the columns and essays are previously published in various magazines in Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Poland, The US and Denmark.

Number seven:

As of April 2 I will write regular columns (every 6th or 7th week) in the norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. The space is called Nordic Advice and I share it with scandinavian writers Ingmar Lemhagen, Ebba Witt-Brattström, Halldór Guðmundsson, Einar Már Guðmundsson, Anneli Jordahl, Tue Andersen Nexø and Rune Lykkeberg.

Number eight:
Having been a stay-at-home dad since last autumn – and mostly working with translations the year before that – I’m now back to writing full time, having received a nine month stipendium. Which is a lot of fun.

I hope you are doing well.
Eiríkur

ps. you can sign up for the newsletter here.

From the award ceremony.

My video poem Höpöhöpö Böks won special mention at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin on friday. I was in Berlin for the book release of Gift für Anfänger in Germany, so I saw the competition program and can attest that it indeed was a great honour. Not only was everything very fancy, the movie theatre much huger than the Youtube-window that my work is usually presented in, the champagne more bottomless and the silk softer, but the films were excellent (I would like to give my own special mention to Viva Zombatista and the whole Gasspedal Animert adventure – available at: http://gasspedalanimert.no/).

The winner was “Der Conny ihr Pony” by Robert Pohle and Martin Hentze. The Goethe Institute prize went to “To the Marriage of true Minds” by Andrew Steggall, based on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, and Vessela Dantcheva got the Ritter Sport prize for a film based on Kurt Schwitters’ An Anna Blume.

Emma Passmore got the Radio Eins listener award for a film called Breath and Constantin Areflev got a special children’s audience award for the Story of Bigmouse.

The Zebra Poetry Film Festival was being held for the fifth time. It’s the biggest venue for poetry films in the world.

Höpöhöpö Böks is univocal lipogram composed for Christian Bök, author of Eunoia – orchestrated, written, read, directed and animated by yours truly.

Coinciding with the book release is the Zebra Poetry Film Festival, also in Berlin, where my short film Höpöhöpö Böks was accepted in the competition category. There will also be a “nordic matinée” – a reading with the nordic writers participating: Simen Hagerup, Norway, J.K. Ihalainen, Finland, Marie Silkeberg, Sweden – with Per Bergström, of the swedish Ramus publishing house, moderating.

Also – a reading at Altes Finanzamt on thursday at 22.00. More info here: http://altesfinanzamt.blogspot.com/

Bratislava!

Yay!

Everyone always has loads of fun at Roskilde.

Dear friends.

Tomorrow morning I fly to Roskilde festival to perform at ‘Ordets Område’ – the literature part of this famous rock festival. I’ll be performing as a part of a team on friday at 16.30 – playing around with the analogue text remixer RE ACT OR – and on thursday (my 32nd birthday!) I’ll be reading sound poetry. Info here and here and program here

Other things happening soonish is reading and lecturing at Kuopio Sound Poetry Seminar in September in Kuopio, Finland – probably some readings in Oulu this summer – and performing in London and Warsaw in November, as well as something in Berlin when my (second) novel, Poison for beginners, is released in Germany (by Kozempel & Timm ) in October/November sometime.

We moved to Oulu, Finland, a couple of weeks ago and are getting pretty comfortable. I hope you are all doing well.
All the best,

Eiríkur

Today 3:AM magazine published an interview with me and excerpts from Fist or Words Bereft of Sense.