It’s hardly controversial to claim that daily life contains transitions. From sleep to wakefulness, REM states to proto-circadian lucidity, pre- to post-caffeine, horizontal to vertical, a.m. to p.m., light to darkness. But many of the day’s transitions also repeat, like a jazz combo vamping while the lead sax or guitar shapes beauty out of curved air. Infinite pomodoro cycles of existence, timeboxes crammed with discrete thoughts, zen’s meditative end-games.
One Swedish word for transition is ‘övergång’, a word I love for the ö with its umlaut, the å its overring. My first experience of the endless daylight of the northern hemisphere summer left me delirious, awake half the ‘night’, drifting in and out of sleep during ‘daylight’ hours. The sensation of sleeping and dreaming in sunlight was strange: it upended my day’s diurnal rhythm. I often woke feeling as if I’d just entered a new dimension.
While not every poem in this collection was written in Sweden, or concerns transitions, I wanted it to express how feeling strange and alienated became a kind of home for me, especially there. I wanted to fill it with songs of transit, elegies to disappeared stars and soundtracks to chaos in the physical and imaginary worlds. To admit the furious unpredictability of life, and of love’s languages. To re-arrive, breathless and confused, in a place I’ve never visited.
The word ‘övergång’ has other potential meanings. The ‘över’ can just mean over, but also of, above, on, across, past, throughout or via. A ‘gång’ might refer to time, the act of walking, a transfer, a corridor or aisle, running, working, a pathway, a passageway or the treading of feet. Re-combining any two of these definitions implies the possibilities of all the others. I hope Transition Vamps acts as a transfer ticket for you, or someone like you, walking past.