I’m thrilled to say that Övergången: Tio Dikter, my new chapbook, is hot off the vanity presses and was launched this week as part of the Södermalm Poetry Festival in Stockholm.
The 10 poems in the chapbook appear in both English and Swedish, thanks to the sterling translation work of Linda Bönström and Boel Schenlaer. I’ll be posting the Swedish translations here shortly.
I gave two readings as part of the festival: on 28 September in Kungsträdgården, and on 29 September at the Stockholms Stadsbibliotek (Stockholm City Library).
Here’s what festival organiser Boel Schenlaer had to say about the event:
The morning papers did not write about the festival, nor did the radio or television news comment on it or welcome the audience to it. In Sweden that is perfectly normal nowadays. It is as if they had some no-poetry campaign going on. The Swedish media, as if with a collective gesture, have done their best to cut off the unseen golden thread between poets and audience, speaking in general terms. The Swedish bookstores have tried their best to do the same; to try to cut off the red thread of poetry from the books to the readers. But what they do not understand is that the poetry thread is both thicker and more difficult to cut off.
