A poster for Nýhil's Poetry Parties - a tour around Iceland in 2003.

‘Twas the eve of Nýhils 2nd international poetry festival, late autumn 2006. I was the manager for the second year in a row. For some reason I can’t remember we didn’t have any microphones. The Norwegian poet, Gunnar Wærness, had misunderstood his flight-information and missed his flight. The Swedish poets Anna Hallberg and Jörgen Gassilewski would be arriving late from Copenhagen—just before going onstage —and they’d be accompanied by their one month old son, Bruno. A storm was ripping through Europe and the Canadian poet Christian Bök was stuck at the international airport in Frankfurt, waiting it out. We were an hour from opening the doors.

Two hours earlier my neighbour in Ísafjörður had rung me up to inform me that when I left the town ten days earlier I’d forgotten to close the big skylight window over my bed. It had now been storming for three days straight in the Westfjords and as my bed filled with melting snow water, it had started to drip down into my neighbour’s apartment.

The week prior to this I’d made some rather harsh remarks on the radio about a member of the Liberal Party who’d written a fiercely racist article in the newspaper, titled “Iceland for Icelanders?” As I was standing there, waiting for microphones and foreign poets and a message from my sister who’d gone to check out my wet apartment, the phone rang.

“Hello?” I said, trembling and sweating. “Is this the guy that was on the radio” a husky voice asked me. I admitted that I was indeed I. The voice on the phone threatened to kill me. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember he spoke in a “we”—as in “we will kill you” and not “I will kill you”.

My apartment turned out to be wet but not destroyed. The foreign poets all showed up and got on stage on time and I haven’t yet been assassinated by some anonymous group of Icelandic racists. But it’s probably the closest I’ve come to having a complete and utter mental breakdown (and I’ve come pretty close). And still, the two years I arranged the Nýhil International Poetry Festival was some of the best times I’ve had in my life: Neurotic, beer-marinated madness on a shoe-string-budget, to get some of the world’s best poets to perform in a country where (almost) nobody had ever heard of them. But as it was all rather nerve-wrecking and I myself, being rather susceptible to such fear and trembling, decided to let other people have a go at helming the madness.

This’ll be the first year though, that I don’t get to attend. In a week’s time (the weekend of 21st to 23rd of August) the festival will once again be realised in Reykjavík. Be on the lookout for a bugger-eyed, sweating lunatic in the crowd. That’s the person responsible for the whole kit and kaboodle. Be nice to them. Give ‘em a hug and a pat on the back. Thank them for their work. The Nýhil International Poetry Festival is no mean feat nor easy task.

Originally appeared in The Reykjavík Grapevine.

> 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

Höpöhöpö Böks premiered on the Icelandic State TV, January 14th, 2009. Click below for original text with a literal translation. More works in this vein can be found here.

Köld öld Böks mjög örg.
Ölböl örlög Böks!
Sök Böks kvöl öll kvöld.
Öll göt Gvöðs köld.

(Bök’s cold century is very angry.
Ale curse is Bök’s destiny.
bök’s guilt is his pain every night.
all of God’s holes are cold.)

Ör hönd Böks sökk,
gjör mörg lönd rök
hönd Böks sökk gröð,
Örg: “Ööööh… Bök!”

(Bök’s quick hand sank,
makes many lands moist,
Bök’s hand sank horny,
angry: “Uuuuuh… Bök!“)

Frönsk mön öll hözl Böks.
Rök mök gjör Bök börn.
Börn Böks ör, frökk:
Örn, Ösp, Björn, Björg.

(All of Bök’s lays are French women,
moist sex makes babies for Bök.
bök’s babies are quick, bold:
Örn, Ösp, Björn, Björg.)

Fökk Bök! Böks sök!
Sölt höf Böks röff
Brött fjöll kjörlönd Böks
Kjörfög Böks frökk stönt.

(Fuck Bök! It’s Bök’s fault!
Bök’s salty baths are rough.
Steep mountains are Bök’s preferred venue.
Bök’s chosen field is daring stunts.)

Mörbörn fjörstöð Böks:
Ösp gjör fönn; Björg gjör stönt;
Sönglög Björns öll böst;
Örn gjör öll lök rök.

(Grease-children are Bök’s fun-station:
Ösp makes snow; Björg does stunts;
Björn’s singing tunes are a bust;
Örn Makes all sheets moist.)

För Böks sönn, löng.
Böks höfn löt vör.
Þökk, Gvöð! Römm gjöf:
Gjör Böks tölt ört.

(Bök’s journey is true, long,
Bök’s harbour is lazy.
Thanks, God! A powerful gift:
Make Bök’s ride fast.)

Tölt Bök, tölt, för hröð.
Stökk Bök, stökk, gjör för
Böks fjörför, gjör tök Böks hörð;
flöt Böks jörð gjör stökkför töff.

(Ride Bök, ride, the journey is fast.
Jump Bök, jump, make the journey
of Bök a fun journey, make Bök’s grip hard;
Bök’s flat earth makes the jumping journey cool.)

Böks stöff: Rör, hörslör, gjörð;
Böks rör mjög, mjög löng;
Hörslör Böks gjör hörför;
Gjörð Böks, örlög Böks.

(Bök’s stuff: Pipes, a veil, a hoop;
Bök’s pipes are very, very long;
Bök’s veil makes veil-marks;
Bök’s hoop, the fate of Bök.)

Stök mjöðm Böks hölt,
öxl Böks hörð, tönn Böks skökk,
Böks sköp rök, gröð mök Böks
gjör Bök röff örlög; fökk röff örlög!

(Bök’s single hip is limp,
Bök’s shoulder hard, Bök’s tooth crooked,
Bök’s cunt is moist, the horny sex of Bök
makes destiny rough for Bök; fuck rough destiny!)

Kjöt Böks stökk!; löng stökk kjöts!,
Böks kjöt gjör Böks tögg mjög töff,
öl Böks gjör mön ör, stöff Böks gjör fjör.
Töff, töff, töff! Töff, töff, töff!

(Bök’s meat jump!; long jumps of meat,
Bök’s meat makes Bök’s toughness very cool,
Bök’s ale makes women quick, Bök’s stuff makes fun.
Cool, cool, cool! Cool, cool, cool!)

(In the summer of 2005 Christian Bök, the author of univocal lipogram Eunoia, was a guest at the Nýhil international poetry festival in Iceland, an event I organized. After some drinks one evening I leant over and said I thought it was really strange that he’d skipped his own Ö (incidentally CB was born “Christian Book” – but found the cross to heavy to bear, and changed his name) – and as the drinking got heavier my bravado grew, and eventually I promised that I would produce an Ö chapter for him. Eventually I did in Icelandic, did a rough translation, and they were printed together in a chapbook by Derek Beaulieu’s No Press for Christians 40th birthday.

Christian’s own reading of it (in Icelandic) can be found in the ‘other readings‘ section.

The word Höpöhöpö (more commonly written höpö höpö) is finnish and means something between “bla bla bla” and “bullshit”. Written in one word it’s the longest word I know that only has ö’s (although I have heard unsubstantiated rumours about it’s synonym: höpölöpö)).

Some people are trying to spin it so: These were bad capitalists, and that doesn’t mean that capitalism is bad. Which of course is a load of youknowwhat. Liberalist policies will inevitably lead to the “market correcting itself” – as it’s called – which causes mayhem for most people. The only way of resurrecting this dead flesh is through the sorcerism of more liberal capitalism – which begets fascism, the breaking down of the welfare system, the fundings for the arts etc.

Right now it seems Icelandic authorities are mostly interested in those types of short term solutions. I don’t know what it’s called in english, but in Iceland those methods are traditionally called “peeing in ones shoe to keep warm”.

The solutions – help.

Help from the IMF – which would turn Iceland into the first “first world country” to seek out the Friedmanist bribe, gotten only through serious social cutbacks. Iceland has long been on its way out of Scandinavia and towards a more liberal economy and this would be the fast-track to get there.

Help from the European Union – that is to say joining. I’m not totally against joining the EU – culturally it would be a strong move, and it would loosen up alot of Iceland’s conservationist & isolationist tendencies. But this is the worst time to do it. Joining the EU means incredible amounts of negotiating – there’s the fishing grounds to be taken care of, for one thing, and an unimaginable amount of stuff to be thought out. You don’t want to join the EU on a hysterical whim – you want to do it when you’re strong, when you don’t need to but want to.

Help from Russia – for some inexplicable reason Russia offered Iceland a loan to fix things. Now, first of all Russia has it’s own problems, so they must have plenty of political reasons for wanting to do this. The way Russia has been behaving towards the world and it self in the last years does not warrant trust and doing deals with the devil (and this goes for the IMF, with it’s history of backing fascists worldwide, in their struggle against working class people) is not the way to go. The conditions are probably never worth the risk.

Besides. I’m not sure what Iceland needs right now is more loans.

My own suggestion is to stay poor. Take care of the poor, the poorer and the poorest. Rebuild the economy slowly – think it through, tread carefully. I mean to say: Fixing the situation isn’t going to happen in three weeks and it shouldn’t. We need to unwind this boatload of nonsense.

Several friends abroad have written to ask how I am doing personally, if this is affecting the poetry scene, if everything is allright. As most of you’ll know I don’t live in Iceland at the moment, but in Finland. Which in effect means I get paid in Icelandic krónur (for translating and writing) and I spend all my money in euros. When I came to Helsinki in april 2007, my rent was 519 euros with a weekly sauna. That is to say, 44 thousand krónur. It’s still 519 euros, which currently bounces between being 75.000 ISK and 102.000 ISK. My wife just finished her studies, and is looking for a job. She spent the summer with me in Ísafjörður, Iceland, working to be able to spend the autumn seeking a good job. Her income was also in ISK. I had a stipendium that lasted through july. So now we’re getting by on my half-salary and eating into the pittance that her income has become.

Which doesn’t mean we’re not okay. It just means we can’t go out to eat, I drink less beer and we steal movies of the internet instead of paying for a cinema-ticket (can you say “steal” on the internet – will I get sued?). I won’t be buying any books in the next months (if anyone wants to support a poetry hungry poet with chapbooks and such – my finnish adress is in the right column) – sometimes I skip the ham on my karelian pirogs. Right now, the question of the Icelandic economic crisis strikes me more as a political one, than as a personally economical one. Most of my family didn’t have much loans, and luckily the only one that did, to my knowledge, also has a decent income.

Which doesn’t mean this isn’t hurting alot of people, that in no way deserved it (many people were persuaded by the banks to change their savings into “perfectly safe” alternatives, that went poof and vanished). One of the political problems right now is that it seems the authorities are more interested in resurrecting the system we had (with new faces on some of the billionaires) than they are in helping those that need it the most (for instance, lowering the credit-rates, giving out emergency funding for those that can’t eat or pay the rent, etc.).

But to my friends, I can luckily say, we’re OK and we’re gonna stay OK.

As for the poetry scene, the crisis poses a threat that has already started to affect us seriously. But poetry is resiliant, and Nýhil is resiliant, and eventually this won’t change much.

Next up is a book of visual poems and sound poems (on CD), out in a few weeks.

The myth about the Icelandic language among the population – the myth that is propogated in the school system, from kindergarteners to doctorates – is that in some ways it is a purer language than that spoken by our brethren in Scandinavia, which at best is considered to be some sort of pidgin Icelandic, “broken Icelandic”, languages not really fit for proper discussion – let alone poetry! – simplified and almost childish in their limited capacity for the use of cases, inflections or the melding of new words. This point of view, whatever merit it may have, has yielded a rabid conservatism within the Icelandic writers community that, despite what people might think, and despite the “official” view, is ever increasing: The idea is partly that we must not fall into the blackhole of becoming scandinavians.

Anyone that reads Icelandic books from the first fifty years of the last century – let alone older books – will notice the lack of uniformity in the use of Icelandic– the grammar is regional and personal, the idioms are regional and personal, the spelling is regional and personal, etc. In the years since there seems to have been a steady movement towards a uniformist coordination – linguistic scholars will often, although it is not fair to say always, mean that one usage is right and the other wrong – often this is a battle of cases and idioms – and believe-you-me, Icelandic professional proofreaders are among the most anal of the lot, scoffing at those who take liberty with language: “What silly mistakes!”

The general consensus seems to be: If you don’t do it the way the rulebooks say you should, then that’s because you don’t know how to – a peculiarity is written off as a mistake. I have even found the need to justify the use of the few colloquials that originate from my own home area – which are mostly about which prepositions to use – in my work as a journalist in my very own hometown, as well as having had battles with proofreaders from the south of the country. The conservative uniformism is so strict that there is quite literally no room for lingual diversity – be it experimental or traditional.

There are of course exceptions, the Icelandic literati – if indeed there is cause to call the half-illiterate a literati – will now and again ordain a poet or writer into a freedman, one that should no longer be revered as a mere servant of the language but as a genius (often rightly so) and granted permission to play – normally though, this permission is given afterwards, and it’s nearly a matter of coincidence who gets it and who doesn’t. To name two brilliant experimental writers, Megas has been ordained, while Steinar Sigurjónsson has not (outside a very small lit-clique).

The need in Iceland to overthrow the language regime is quite dire (“Tear this wall down!”). Viewing a language as such a rigid object does not only promote idiocy, it is literally a pathway to fascism (“No pasaran!”). A postmodern fascism, of course – where people are culled into action rather than forced (“Make love, not war”). A father saying to his child: „We really do have a great need for protecting our language, we are such a small nation. Now, you wouldn’t want to live in a world where noone spoke Icelandic, would you? You know, maybe then we would all speak Danish, and the pronunciation is not very easy.“

And the child whispers: „Yes, daddy, I promise to rid myself of dative-illness.“

Yes, it’s called „dative-illness“ – and it means that you have a preference for the dative instead of the accusative, or in some cases, the nominative. According to Icelandic parents and elementary school teachers, this is a life-threatening condition.

Enter: Experimental poetry. The eternal fucking with language – in the sense of disturbing it and loving it at the same time. Fooling around with it. Cheating on it. Taking it apart and putting it back together again – inverted or otherwise malformed.

Iceland doesn’t not have a particularly rich tradition of experimentation. Not to say that people haven’t experimented, not to say the experiments haven’t at times been brilliant – but mostly they’ve been discarded as momentary flippancies, and the postmodern fascist’s answer to the artist’s weeping is: „Now now, you are very talented, we know. But you should focus on something more suitable, perhaps…“ – And the most talented of people turn to rewriting Knut Hamsun or Halldór Laxness.

A necessary statement to make at this point is that Icelandic literature (or poetry) isn’t in all senses bad. What is done is often well done – it is possible to thoroughly enjoy this conservatism, it may even border on the same profoundness that characterized the literature of old, you may feel yourself swept away on a pathos-tour-de-force. But somehow it’s often just more of the same. Their qualities need to be recognized, not doing so would be the same as saying the Da Vinci Code isn’t a page-turner – a statement intended to scorn it, I guess, but the truth is that while being one of the most awful pieces of literature published in years, it is nevertheless a page-turner. Icelandic literature is good at pathos. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that pathos is good at “literature”, or good in general.

Experimental writing isn’t thrown out with brute force, it’s thrown out with the tenderness of the understanding, yet ultimately intolerant. Like when the Icelandic police a few days ago „removed“ two dozen gypsies from Reykjavík – by showing up in police uniforms, giving them plane-tickets and driving them to the airport. Officially noone was deported, officially noone was forced to go anywhere – even though it seems the police hinted that they could deport the gypsies if needed – but still they went. Apparently there was a need to clear the streets of musicians for the Reykjavík Art Festival, that has just started.

The same social-democratic-postmodernist/diet-fascist – or whaddyawannacallit – approach is used on anything else that annoys the precious middle classes, the burgeoning structural enthusiasts that now populate Iceland to such an extent that rebellion doesn’t only seem hard, it seems futile. Like storming city hall is pointless for todays revolutionaries – the powers that be don’t need no city hall. And picking apart language as if it were a grandfather clock, is not really either a practice anyone hands out Nobel prizes for. But yet it seems that ever more poets find a calling within exactly those structures, or non-structures, of taking language apart and putting it back together, inverted or otherwise malformed. It is what defines most experimental poetry, and to a lesser extent probably almost all poetry worthy of the name. From TS Eliot to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets to the Flarfists, from the silliest of slam-poets to the Four Horsemen.

The infinities of the world, every word and every meaning, all the meanings behind every word and all the words behind every meaning, have been divided into categories of right and wrong, and questioning those categories is nigh pointless – the machine will in all probability have it’s way. Yet, it’s probably the only possible course of action for anyone who actually cares for a language or for language itself.

Viewing language as any sort of finite object is the equivalent of giving up on thinking. Icelandic popstars who sing in english are often criticized with the argument: “You should be able to express it more precisely in your own (natural) tongue”. This is in many ways a misunderstanding of how language functions. To begin with, saying anything precisely, is as impossible as it is impossible for a road-sign-arrow to turn into the object it points at. It quite simply is not an option. If I were to deduce the “actual” meaning behind said criticism, it would be something along the lines of: “You should go the road more travelled, do not stray into unfamiliar territories for you might get lost.” A stay-at-home message to the boldly adventurous.

It is well and right to mention though, that when aforementioned popstars are asked to defend their choice of language, they do so with a logic that is of the same origin: “English is the language of rock’n’roll – the lingua franca of music.” That is to say: “We want to stay at home, we don’t dare to be adventurous.”

Both ideas are equally lingually conservative, and therefore (in my mind!) repulsive.

To begin with language needs neither to be known nor understood to be profound or beautiful. One could mention such strangeness as Christian Bök’s “Motorized Razors”, Caroline Bergvall’s “Hosts’s Tale”, Leevi Lehto’s ”Sanasade” or Kenny Goldsmith’s habit of reading in languages he doesn’t understand, with similar experiments being done at Nokturno’s In another’s voice series.

Another valid example is the nordic poetry community, and the discussions that take place within it. At a recent seminar in Biskops-Arnö in Sweden, the linguistic gymnastics were quite interesting, even to one who has a very basic understanding of the scandinavian languages, but as Biskops-Arnö conductor Ingmar Lemhagen noted the Nordic collaboration is mostly founded on misunderstandings. Having a decent understanding of written Scandinavian and spoken Swedish, about 70% of spoken Norwegian, 85% of spoken Faroese, all of the Icelandic and most of the English, while none of the spoken Danish, made discussions a very interesting terrain to cover. It was well nigh impossible to know what had been said, what had been covered and what had been discarded – and yet the discussion wielded ideas from somewhere, bits and pieces that form some sort of chaotic structure that is far from meaningless, one that is rather impregnating, in the same way as half-finished ideas can generate millions of finished (or half-finished) ideas, whereas a finished idea is just that.

Paal Bjelke Andersen noted in an article at the communal blog for the seminar

It is only proper to add to this Icelandic and Finnish – even though it wasn’t much. Zoning in and out of this debate was, although admittedly tiresome, an interesting experience. Paal also mentioned to me that he found it interesting to read Icelandic, seeing as there are mutual codes in the two languages, and the codes can be cracked more or less just by looking very hard and thinking very long (something which can’t really be done verbally – unless you’re all the more clever and the speaker talks all the more slowly). The finnish is a game of its own, although even the tiniest of understandings or misunderstandings can be very enjoyable – as I do remember listening for words and word-parts in discussions by Oscar Rossi and Leevi Lehto, even just trying to realize where one word ends and the next begins. It’s a bit like being an infant again, you get to poke at the world in near blindness, trying to figure out how things work and although it all sounds more or less like bababeebeegaga, you get the distinct feeling that there is actually something more there. Oscar and Leevi actually seemed to be communicating, with laughter, frowns and gestures indicating that the words being past between them was some sort of firm ground to stand on, even though for me the same terrain is pure quicksand.

Some weeks ago I was sitting at a café in Helsinki with two finnish poets discussing the whole “writing in english as a second language” thing, that has become more and more popular – there are several blogs in the world for this, books have been published – amongst those Leevi Lehto’s Lake Onega and other poems – and as Leevi has pointed out it may be a way for non-english speakers of gaining the upper hand on english-speaking constraintual super-poets like Christian Bök, which would otherwise be unavailable to those merely schooled in their native languages, spoken by few and hereto stretched by next to none (whereas english has the benefits of having been fucked over so often, and by so many people for so many different reasons, that experimenting with it often seems like the equivalent of surrogating wild and sweaty sex with standing naked in a field letting the warm breeze arouse you – it’s not that it’s not nice, it’s just not the same).

Of course although Christian could not learn to speak English as a second language, he could learn how to speak Finnish as a second language – but there really is no language in the world that can compete with English, it’s the only one with proper momentum, and perhaps especially English as a second language.

Reenter: Experimental poetry. Sitting at said café, discussing the niceties of actually having a common culture with the international avant-garde, post-avant, experimental, radical writing, language whaddyawannacallit, it also dawned on me that the need to fuck over our own languages is imminent. Well, it’s either that or jumping ship completely, somehow. Let’s say I feel aroused by the idea of fucking over Icelandic. Let’s say I’m really, really aroused. It may hardly get through to anyone interested in it – seeing as the interest for such things is rather limited with only 300 thousand possible readers – and it may even be enough to induce interest in less then seven people, which again according to Leevi Lehto is the prerequisite for changing the conscience of the masses. The size alone makes Icelandic a damn fine upper hand.

Then again, this is also a certain disability: The groundwork for destruction, the methodical planting of bombs along the frontwalls of nouns and windows of adjectives – pardon my metaphorizing – has not been done, and the destruction of a language is no small feat that can be achieved by single individuals, no matter how hyper-active their lutheran work ethic is.

It needs to be said that when I say destruction I mean it in the most creative sense. As the crumbling of a house creates a field of interesting rubble, as taking down a tree lamppost leaves you with a nice log for bonfires and an electrical light lying on the ground next to it.

There is very little in Iceland that could be called an avant-garde tradition – if that is indeed not a contradiction in terms. Experimental writing has been limited to a few groups or individuals taking small detours that have ended in deadends only to be (more or less) forgotten about. A contemporary example would be the Medúsa group – one of the founding members of which was Sjón, who received the Nordic Literature Prize in 2005. An experimental group of late surrealist poets and artists (1979-1986) whose work is very hard to come by, outside the national library in Reykjavík. I have in fact, although being at least mildly interested, not seen much of it at all. The other members of Medúsa have, as writers, mostly been forgotten about – including the poet Jóhamar, who remains an experimental writer somewhere in the invisible outbacks of Icelandic literature.

As much as one might find it near-kitschy to canonize and anthologize avant-garde poetry, being interested in it in a society that doesn’t canonize or anthologize it isn’t particularly much fun. For one thing it makes continuation of experimental writing seem less plausible – the tradition is elsewhere, experimentation doesn’t have a tradition (which is probably a lie – most contemporary experimental poets I know get turned on by the experimental poets of the bygones, most of them read anthologies wet& wild, hot&bothered with flaming hard-ons).

It’s hard for me to say how much of this, to which extent and in which areas, these are international concerns, which ones have a home in several countries and which (if any) are Icelandic phenomena, simply because of the rift that divides Icelandic poetry from it’s foreign counterparts, the pervading lack of interest in foreign poetry in Iceland – although there are individuals interested, the poetry-culture as such, could more or less not care less – which means, for instance, that very little is written about foreign poetry and, outside of Whitman and such gargantuously canonized figures, foreign poetry isn’t found in Icelandic bookstores, and even then, I would dare to estimate that foreign poetry for sale in all of Iceland would not reach 3 shelf-metres.

Icelandic digital poet Jón Örn Loðmfjörð has created Goggi, a text generator that uses blog entries to form sentences.

Thanks to Marko Niemi and Nokturno, Goggi can now be found in english and finnish. Click here.

Goggi has also taken to blogging about the news, in Icelandic. Click here.

–

I’ve put up two new poems on the poetry blog. The first one is called Leevi is a wild dolphin – simply created with Googlism and backspace. It’s protagonist is of course finnish poet Leevi Lehto.

The second one is Höpöhöpö Böks, a univocal lipogram whose protagonist is of course canadian poet Christian Bök. The poem is presented in it’s original Icelandic along with rough english translation – and linked to readings of it, both by me and by Christian.

–

Received two recent filling Stations a few days back. One with an article I wrote about Nýhil, posted here below: A brief history of Nýhilism: Felix Culpa.

–

Two articles have been written recently in Iceland, one for Tíu þúsund tregawött (a webzine I actually edit) by a Davíð Stefánsson who claims my fundamental setting is “opposition”, that I write too much and don’t like things (Icelandic poetry) enough. Hermann Stefánsson wrote a similar article for Morgunblaðiðs Lesbók (The cultural section of Morgunblaðið, Iceland’s biggest newspaper) – where one of the mainpoints was that Nýhil wasn’t at all “new” (always an exhilirating attempt, measuring and proving or disproving “newness”) and that it was abnormal that people (I) always answered their critics. The end line was something like: “A new phone book was just published. Isn’t anyone going to answer it?”

Today Haukur Már Helgason, Ingólfur Gíslason, and myself have a retort-article in Lesbók – about the new phone book, and how old this crazy recycho-art is getting. At least Kenny Goldsmiths books aren’t always the same, year after year.

–

I’ve stopped putting new poems in the anthology I’m translating. There’s loads of stuff that I couldn’t fit in – some simply because it arrived late and there was little time, and other because I haven’t found a way to translate it yet. If all goes well I might do another one in a year or two, if Leevi agrees – I already have a list of 15-20 people that I would like to translate. And some I’d like to translate more, actually.

I will post the table of contents here, with original titles, late next week probably.

If a Lorentzian spacetime contains a compact region Ω, and if the topology of Ω is of the form Ω ~ R x Σ, where Σ is a three-manifold of nontrivial topology, whose boundary has topology of the form dΣ ~ S², and if furthermore the hypersurfaces Σ are all spacelike, then the region Ω contains a quasipermanent intra-universe wormhole.[1]

When one tries to speak of poetry one usually starts by making a really big circle, a really really big circle the engulfs the entire universe. When one actually starts mouthing the words that will – if god and effort allow – become one’s eternal speech about poetry (and therefore everything else) one finds that the circle has shrunk. The circle is now no more than a dot. The dot, darkbrown like a mole or something of the sort, one realizes, is on the tip of one’s own nose. This, unlike the words that opened this my eternal speech about poetry (and therefore everything else) is not merely a theory. This is the god’s honest truth.

Sitting on the edge of my bed a few weeks, days, minutes or seconds ago (depending on who you find it proper to believe in these matters) I noticed something on the tip of my nose and on the unfocused plateau in front of it I started marvelling at the accomplishments brought to life by my friends, my close acquaintances, my relatives and, oh yes indeed, by myself.

By some astonishing coincidence this was the same time as I started writing this piece. My eternal speech about poetry (and therefore everything else) – cleverly subtitled: The unspoken facts.

(It shall be noted, and probably has already been noted by the more clever of readers, that this essay, rant, or what you want to call it, is not at all entitled eternal anything or the other, and it certainly is not subtitled).

I don’t remember what it was that I promised to write about, but it must’ve had something to do with literature. Very probably poetry, and I am almost positive Icelandic poetry is what I promised to write about. Oh, the late Sigfús Daðason! The marvels of the late Dagur Sigurðarson! The late Einar Ben, late Davíð Stefánsson, late Egill Skallagrímsson, late Tómas Guðmundsson! Ahhh… one’s heart throbs with joy at the infinite beauty and bleh bleh.

Please, I don’t mean no disrespect. As of late though, I’ve found an increasing desire to dismiss the late, as being a little less than timely. The circle is closing in. We’re not crossing the creek to get water, not this time. We don’t have time, I am in a hurry. Please.

II

So Nýhil.

A few years back I was standing on a streetcorner in Reykjavik. It was a great winter of much poverty in the circles I was circulating in, and me and a friend of mine, a poet with prematurely greying hair and a knack for walking holes into his shoes in a matter of days, were sharing our last cigarette in a quiet winter still. It might have been tuesday, and I think it was around 4 in the morning.
In the night.

We had just shared a beautiful late dinner of rice and soy sauce, a treat that we had grown bizzarely acustomed to.

And there it was. Suddenly, as if it had crashed on top of our heads: an idea as beautifully upheaving and destructive as if Orville and Wilbur had taken off in a Concorde supersonic transport (crashing or soaring, one or the other, take your pick).

After jumping up and down to display our joy and amazement for a few seconds, minutes, days or weeks (depending on who tells the story) we realized that the idea, like we’ve realized since goes for all ideas worth anything, was naught but a name.

The name was, it goes without saying: Nýhil.

III

As in nihil: nothing. As in vox et praetera nihil: voice and nothing more. As in aut Caeser aut nihil: Either a Caeser or nothing. As in nihil obstat: Nothing obstructs.

And as in nihilism: A doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths.[2] A wise man once said that nihilism was the black hole of philosophy. A wiser statement yet would be that nihilism is the black hole of poetry.

The nihilists of old went down the blackhole to stay there, with rotting teeth and pathetic revolutions that somehow never got farther than a shot in the foot. When the nihilist says: nothing matters so I might as well rape and pillage. The nýhilist asks: if nothing matters than why should I bother with raping and pillaging? They say buddhism is nihilism with a smile. Nýhilism is nihilism with a ‘ý’.

Ný. It’s the age-old prefix for new, as I guess most nordic readers have already guessed.

IV

This is where we start getting closer to the point. The circle keeps closing in and the spot on my nose is itching with glee. The black hole has a theoretical brother known as the worm hole. The name is derived from an analogy that a worm crawling over any surface will not circumvent an apple to get to the other side. The worm will dig through it, and therefore get to the other side much quicker than otherwise thought possible. Going down the black hole you might reappear somewhere else:

Different types of black holes have differently shaped singularities: in a stationary black hole it is a point, in a rotating black hole it is a ring. If you passed through the center of the ring without touching the ring singularity itself, the mathematics predicts you will come out somewhere else and you cannot return. This is the basis of the wormhole idea. However the mathematics gives no indication of where (or when) that somewhere else is, and no way to control or select it yourself.[3]

Apples and worms: Does anyone recall the symbolism?

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God”.[4]

Yet, much like in the apple, there’s a hole in the story – there grew no apples in the Middle East. Which is hardly a great matter for anyone godlike, for anyone that has the wisdom to not circumvent the apple (malum in latin; evil is malus) but to go straight through. From one side to the other, laughing, in an action of non-action known as wu-wei within the Tao – in the old texts they compare it to moving through water. But enough of that.

What was the first thing the Lord asked, what was the first question to form on the lips (or not-lips) of God Almighty after his children betrayed him?

The Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”[5]

Man had dug through the apple and was long gone.

V

Nýhil is deliberately hard to define. For one thing noone really knows who belongs to it. It’s been claimed that anyone that has done anything in the name of Nýhil in the two weeks preceding anyone’s claim that anyone else is a nýhilist is in fact a nýhilist. If more than two weeks have passed, supposedly that individual (poet, artist, athlete, patron-of-the-arts, etc.) is something completely different.

Anyone that does belong to Nýhil (if anyone really does) can claim whatever they like about Nýhil. Manifestos have been written and forgotten, remembered and rewritten only to be deemed utter nonsense. The plan is perhaps not so much to make a symbolic gesture towards the ambiguity of truth, as much as it is to achieve contradiction, along with all the friction and movement that such an accomplishment brings. That’s how it happens that a society of not really anyone, with noone in charge, a worthless army of fools any way you look at it, has published around 20 poetry books, 4 essay collections, 2 DVD’s, a novel and a CD, produced four short films, a sportsbag, three instruments, while travelling the country for readings, holding a two-day international poetry festival in Reykjavik, and will soon open a bookstore in Reykjavik with an emphasis on underground art and poetry. During this entire time (about four years) people belonging (or not belonging) to Nýhil have continued publishing poetry books, novels, and translations with other more pristine publishing houses.

VI

Poetry is thought for those that deem it worthless. Good poetry comes from those that loathe poetry with a greater fervour than your average reader can possibly muster. There’s probably a point in explaining it, but I’ve lost sight of it. But my faith remains as firm as ever.

[1] Lorentzian Wormholes; Matt Visser.
[2] One of a few definitions in the Merriem-Websters dictionary.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_holes#Black_hole_FAQ
[4] Genesis 3:4.
[5] Genesis 3:8.

“Angesichts einer gemeinsamen Charakteristik der Arbeiten Nýhils muss zu den Gedichtbänden bemerkt werden, dass sie in Wirklichkeit keine solchen im eigentlichen Sinne sind. Die unter dem Etikett der Norrænar bókmenntir erschienen Bücher sind Formexperimente, die jedoch nur bedingt als neu gelten können. So liebäugeln sie mit Elementen des Dadaismus, der Konkreten Poesie und der Collage, die unter ihren Pionieren auch Burroughs verzeichnet. Während Schriftsteller wie William S. Burroughs und Allen Ginsberg zu Vorbildern afsteigen, ist eine Annährung an Klassiker wie Laxness oder Gunnarsson kaum beabsichtigt. Obwohl die Autoren Nýhils sich an verschiedenen modernistischen Strömungen orientieren, kann man nicht behaupten, dass eins besonderer Stil bestimmend wäre; auch wenn die Einflüsse eher avantgardisch als realistisch sind.

Wenn man nun versucht diese Gruppierung auf einen gemeinsamen Nenner zu bringen, wäre Mischung das richtige Wort. Sowohl als eine Art von Zusammenschluss unterschiedlichster Individuen, als auch auf formaler und inhaltlicher Ebene ist es ein Konglomorat aus den verschiedensten Ideen. Was die Bandbreite der Themen angeht, könnte man damit allein einen eigenen Artikel füllen. Innerhalb der Themen versteckt sich das Spiegelbild unserer chaotischen Gegenwart. So ist das Interesse für Britney Spears größer als die für die Ausbeutung in der >Dritten Welt<. [...] Dank der Arbeiten Nýhils in den letzten fünf Jahren und ihrer ebenfalls revolutionären Einstellung ist die Dichtkunst in das öffentliche Bewusstsein zurückgekehrt. Diese Wiederbelebung der Poesie ist der beeindruckende Verdienst Nýhils. Und obwohl nicht alle der gleichen Meinung über die Vorzüge dieser Dichtung sind, ist es sehr wahrscheinlich, dass Nýhil seine Spuren im isländischen Literaturleben hinterlassen wird. Ob sich das Ergebnis allerdings jemals zum Kanon verwandelt, ist heute noch ungewiss.”

Björn Kozempel translated from the Icelandic.

So evidently we might not get canonized. Bummer! Maybe we’ll get lucky and be anthologized, metadwarfosized or fossilized.

Ingi Björn Guðnason also wrote a note-worthy article for the last issue of Nordic literature, that can be found in english here and in danish here.