#Contemporary Swedish Poetry

[majestativa]

Music, you touch my depths and I cannot explain you.

— GÖRAN SONNEVI ⚜️ Contemporary Swedish Poetry, transl. by John Matthias & Göran Printz-Påhlson, (1980)

[hantises]

Why are you so desolate, my soul, and anxious inside me?

[yeswearemagazine]

The Tri-Weekly Most Successful YWAMag Selection #108

Carstruck © Matti Merilaid aka Street Matt :

[justforbooks]

South Korean writer Han Kang has won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature, announced this morning by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Kang was cited for "her intense poetic prose" that "confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose." She is the first Korean to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. She receives 11 million Swedish kronor (just over $1 million).

Kang is best known in the English-speaking world for The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith (Hogarth), which won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 and was made into a movie. (See our review here.) The Swedish Academy commented: "Written in three parts, the book portrays the violent consequences that ensue when its protagonist Yeong-hye refuses to submit to the norms of food intake. Her decision not to eat meat is met with various, entirely different reactions. Her behaviour is forcibly rejected by both her husband and her authoritarian father, and she is exploited erotically and aesthetically by her brother-in-law, a video artist who becomes obsessed with her passive body. Ultimately, she is committed to a psychiatric clinic, where her sister attempts to rescue her and bring her back to a 'normal' life. However, Yeong-hye sinks ever deeper into a psychosis-like condition expressed through the 'flaming trees,' a symbol for a plant kingdom that is as enticing as it is dangerous."

Her other titles published in English include The White Book, translated by Deborah Smith (Hogarth), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2018; Human Acts: A Novel, translated by Deborah Smith (Hogarth) (see our review here); Greek Lessons, translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won (Hogarth) (see our review here); and We Do Not Part: A Novel, translated by Emily Yae Won and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hogarth). Mongolian Mark won the Yi Sang Literary Prize in 2005, and her novella Baby Buddha won the Korean Literature Novel Award in 1999 and was made into a film. She has published other novels, novellas, and poetry in Korean.

Kang's first published works were poems that appeared in 1993. The following year, her first short story appeared. Her other honors include the Today's Young Artist Award and the Manhae Prize for Literature. She has taught creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[hayleylovesjessica]

Hey Beatrice! I've been listening to Taylor all day, and just put on Das Lied von der Erde to cleanse the palate a bit. Do you have any other recs?

I'm screaming! Okay, I hope you listen with a copy of the German lyrics (which are very loose renderings of classical Chinese poetry) and English translations. The best composers, much like Tay Tay herself, marry word and music so well that you lose quite a lot when you ignore one and simply focus on the other.

Anyway! I was thinking about you listening to the Bach Solo Cello Suites a couple days ago, and I thought I'd recommend some Baroque solo keyboard music. Importantly, I use the word "keyboard" because the piano didn't exist yet. All this music for two hands (or, in some cases, four) would have originally been played on a harpsichord, and it's interesting to listen to it played on that instrument. Decades ago, Kenneth Gilbert and Ralph Kirkpatrick were pioneers in making a number of high-quality recordings of Bach and other Baroque composers on harpsichord, and in more recent years, the Iranian harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani has revived interest in hearing all this music on the instrument that it was actually written for. (He's also commissioned a lot of new music for harpsichord from contemporary composers, which is pretty cool.)

So, if you want to listen to it on harpsichord, go for it! The harpsichord serves the structural aspects of this music, like the extraordinary contrupuntal (i.e., simultaneous multi-line) composition, very well. For example, the large collection of preludes and fugues that Bach wrote called The Well-Tempered Clavier (Das wohltemperierte Klavier) sounds pretty good on harpsichord. However, the harpsichord is not the most expressive instrument, and the interpretive possibilities that it affords are definitely constrained relative to those afforded by the modern piano. So, what follows will be recommendations that involve pianists playing all this wonderful keyboard music from the Baroque period, for example, the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, who's been extremely well served in recordings by the excellent Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin, who's made two Scarlatti albums so far. Scarlatti's sonatas are interesting in that they're all basically 3-8 minutes long. In other words, in terms of the historical development of the form, they're baby sonatas, but they're must-hears because Sudbin's playing is gorgeous. Also, the engineering team with BIS, the indie Swedish classical label whom Sudbin records for, has done truly exemplary work in capturing the crystalline little sound worlds that Sudbin creates with each of these short works.

That said, as fabulous as Scarlatti is, compared to Bach, he's a minor figure. Baroque keyboard begins and ends with Bach. Have you ever listened to the Goldberg Variations? It's one of the grandest works ever written (I almost want to say "full stop"!) for ten fingers and two hands. It's all-encompassing, at times spiritual, melancholy, introspective, extroverted, joyful, and, ultimately, profound. In short, it is all the stuff of life itself, and it takes a helluva great artist to put it over in all its complexity and seriousness and fun. The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould became an icon due to his first recording of the work in the 1950s, a recording that kinda reflects the youthful spirit of jazz, especially bop. Gould made another, more mature recording at the end of his life in the early 1980s. It's very different, a bit longer, more focused on emotional depth and beauty, so it's probably my first choice, but both recordings are very much worth checking out. There are other outstanding recordings of the Goldberg Variations by Murray Perahia, one of the most important elder statesmen of the piano in the world today, and by Jeremy Denk, a younger American pianist who's also a ferociously, voraciously smart and interesting writer.

Bach wrote much, much more music for keyboard: Toccatas, English Suites, French Suites, Inventions, Sinfonias, etc. Also, Bach's Art of Fugue, an abstract theoretical treatise in compositional form with no instrument specified, has been recorded as a keyboard work several times. So, if you want to explore all this music in more depth, the pianists Angela Hewitt and András Schiff would be wonderful guides in your explorations. They're both among the greatest pianists alive, and they've made extensive excellent Bach recordings that go back decades. Moreover, lots of pianists have made wonderful one-off recordings of individual works. For example, the awesome Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski made a recording of English Suite No. 6 around 20 years ago that's to die for. In addition, in recent years, three young pianists have put out Bach albums for Deutsche Grammophon that are loose compendiums of various short keyboard works as well as transcriptions of pieces that Bach composed for violin, organ, or other instruments: Rafał Blechacz, another Polish pianist who's best known for being a world-class Chopin specialist but who's a genius with everything that he turns his attention to (e.g., back in 2010, I went to a recital of his in which he performed not only Chopin but also Bach, Mozart, and Debussy, and it was one of the best recitals I've ever heard in my life); the Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov, whose recording of Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody I recommended last month as probably the best ever made; and my favorite pianist of the last 6-7 years, Iceland's Víkingur Ólafsson. In particular, Ólafsson's album won some big-time classical album of the year prizes. It's so thoughtful in how the tracks are organized and sequenced, and it's so beautifully played.

I also have to give a shout out to another Víkingur Ólafsson album, Debussy • Rameau. Debussy is one of the S-tier masters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He opened up whole new possibilities in tonal harmony, and his piano works are among the greatest ever written, right up there with those of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. Much like Ólafsson's Bach album, Debussy • Rameau is a genius work of programming in how it intersperses pieces by Debussy with pieces by Jean-Philippe Rameau, the greatest French composer of the Baroque era. Sadly, he gets overshadowed by his peers Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel, but Rameau was an extraordinary composer who deserves more love. In Ólafsson's hands, the way in which the works from the two periods complement each other, as though in some sort of friendly game of call and response, is fascinating. And his playing is just (chef's kiss) and makes me wish that I could play piano. Sigh. But for real, I'm dying to hear him live in person at some point. He's such a brilliant keyboard artist.

Okay, I think that does it for now! Let me know if you check out any of these recordings!

[cordeliaflyte]

you gotta get in on the swedish post-ironic poetry scene. good contemporary writing exists i swear

do you have any recommendations 📝📝

[natreads]

2023 reading wrap up

I read 45 books this year, including one for work. I don't typically include those but I was working with the translation of a book and so it had technically already come out so I decided to put it on Goodreads. I have however not included it in this wrapup, so there's only 44 of them here.

Classics (8) 1 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 - ⭐⭐⭐

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (reread) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (queer, reread) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans (e, childrens) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Grey Woman by Elizabeth Gaskell (au) ⭐⭐⭐

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (modern) ⭐⭐⭐

The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera ⭐⭐⭐

Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz (modern) ⭐⭐⭐

Teleny by Anonymous (queer) ⭐⭐⭐

Poetry (4) 1 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1 - ⭐⭐⭐

Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky (e) ⭐⭐⭐

Closer Baby Closer by Savannah Brown (e) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Carrying by Ada Limón (au/ph) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha (e) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Romance (2) 1 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1 - ⭐⭐⭐

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn (au) ⭐⭐⭐

Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (reread, queer) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Non-fiction (10) 3 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2 - ⭐⭐⭐

Letters to Camondo by Edmund De Waal ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Det är natten by Karolina Ramqvist (sv, e) ⭐⭐⭐

En bok av dagar by Patti Smith (tr) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Kind of Magic by Luke Edward Hall ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Blir du ledsen om jag dör? by Nicolas Lunabba (sv) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Krigsdagböcker by Astrid Lindgren (sv) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Dagbok från 20-talet by Nicolas Lunabba (sv) ⭐⭐⭐

The Forster Cavafy Letters edited by Peter Jeffreys ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Greco Disco by Luke Edward Hall ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fantasy (1) 1 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (au, ph) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Contemporary (19) 1 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 8 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 9 - ⭐⭐⭐

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin (queer, au) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Kärlek i Seoul by Sang Young Park (queer, tr, au) ⭐⭐⭐

Andromeda by Therese Bohman (sv) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Min Far by Annie Ernaux (tr) ⭐⭐⭐

Göra sig kvitt Eddy Bellegueule Édouard Louis (queer, tr) ⭐⭐⭐

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (au) ⭐⭐⭐

After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz (queer) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Babetta by Nina Wähä (au, sv) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

My Policeman by Bethan Roberts (queer) ⭐⭐⭐

Rumple Buttercup by Matthew Gray Gubler (e, childrens) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Aftonland by Therese Bohman (sv) ⭐⭐⭐

Om uträkning av omfång 1 by Solvej Balle (tr, au) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Adventures of the Seven Christmas Cards by Anthony Horowitz (au) ⭐⭐⭐

Vinternoveller by Ingvild H. Rishøi (tr) ⭐⭐⭐

Heartstopper volume 5 by Alice Oseman (queer, YA) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Stargate by Ingvild H. Rishøi (tr, au) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

In the Absence of Men by Philippe Besson (queer, tr) ⭐⭐⭐

Saint Sebastian’s Abyss by Mark Haber (au) ⭐⭐⭐

Additional info and stats under the cut:

e = ebook au = audiobook ph = physical (only used when I alternated between the audiobook and the physical copy) tr = translated sv = originally in Swedish

Childrens - 2

YA - 1

Middle grade - 1

Graphic novel - 1

Modern classics - 2

Translated - 8 (Korean, English, French x3, Danish x1, Norwegian x2)

Swedish - 7

Audio - 12

E-book - 6

Rereads - 3

Queer - 8

5 stars - 7

4 stars - 18

3 stars - 19

Owned - 30 + bought 1 as e-book)

Unhauled after reading - 8

[synesindri]

hey sin!! do you have any book recommendations? i feel like we share a lot of the same interests and taste in literature, it’s always nice to see your posts and reblogs on my dash :)

hiiii hi lovely!! what a delightful message to receive <3 here are some books i have been thinking about a lot lately, for one reason or another!

the fifth wound, by aurora mattia: read this one earlier in the summer and my god. never have i ever seen elaborate prose poetry like this before. incredible vibes, incredible, beautiful, harsh, delicate engagement with experiences near and dear to my heart. painful in a lot of ways but super unique and kind of an instant favorite for me

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead, by tom stoppard: technically a play but what can you do. rewired my brain at age 17 but on my mind again because i'm trying to figure out if i can go see dom monaghan and billy boyd perform it lol. existentialist qpr buddy tragicomedy of all time

the round house, by louise erdrich: a very bleak and emotionally intense book set on an ojibwe reservation in north dakota. i originally read this in a community ed class i took five years ago on revenge narratives that consisted of me and about fifteen retirees, not sure why it's been haunting me recently but there it is.

harrow the ninth, by tamsyn muir: i'm only about half way through this which explains why i've been thinking about it a lot but like. how often do you encounter books written almost entirely in second person?

from a swedish homestead, by selma lagerlöf: loosely assorted stories about life in mainly-rural sweden ranging from medieval to contemporary (early 20th century). kind of bleak, kind of quaint, kind of bizarre, includes a fair bit of magical realism. i originally listened to it as this audiobook and the reader, lars rolander, is sooo part of the experience for me

if you have any recs for me i would love to know about them!

[bluedalahorse]

17 and 18 from the Fanfic Writer Asks!

Before I start, the ask box game is linked here in case anyone else wants to ask me something.

17. What’s something you’ve learned about while doing research for a fic?

Two learnings! Food and fashion!

A food-related piece of information to start: somehow I ended up reading about kåldolmar (cabbage rolls) and how they are allegedly linked to time in the 18th century when Carl XII was staying in the Ottoman Empire. Apparently (according to what I read at least) they’re a Swedish adaptation of dolmas. Which is kinda cool to learn, especially since I’m someone who likes food from the eastern Mediterranean.

And now, fashion: Because I’m writing something set in 1809, I did end up reading about clothes closures, and the different ways that clothes were closed with pins and drawstrings and the like. I think spicy scenes in fanfic tend to fall back on buttons a lot, whether those fics are historical or contemporary. But strings! Laces! Pins! Imagine the ways they can be used to amplify the spiciness content, whether that’s through humor or through sensory surprises or whatever else. I’m just saying.

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

Oh gosh. I have a few lines I really like, but I like them so much I want readers to discover them in context. So instead I’m going to grandstandingly share a few passages from Heart and Homeland, one for each of the primary viewpoint characters I write, and say what I like about them.

So anyway, to preview… queer-and-questioning Felice! Poetry-influenced Sara! Unreliable August! Protestant Kristina!

Felice

“My father is not easy to discuss while dancing,” Simon was quiet for a moment, as if letting the air swallow the entire topic of fathers. Then a boyish smile, almost shy, came to his face. “But I heard you and Wilhelm have met before?” Ah, so the smile was for Wilhelm. “Tell me about that.”

“We were six years old,” said Felice. “Mamma has been eyeing us all night. I swear she wants me to marry him now.”

“Would you? Would you consider it a love match if your parents arranged it?”

What a strange question, Felice thought. “I’m not a foreign princess and Sweden needs an alliance. So I couldn’t.”

“I couldn’t marry Wilhelm either,” Simon said.

Although Simon and Felice both laughed at the latter comment, Felice felt Simon’s hand twitch suddenly in her own, as if he were startled. What did that mean? The music in the background did not change key or tempo, as if the orchestra itself was pressuring her not to ask. 

So instead Felice only said, “Such a droll remark, Mr. Eriksson.”

It left her heart feeling sad and a little rain-soaked, after she said it. She needed more of their secret language to say Wilhelm has a hold on you and I would like to understand it more, if you judged us friends enough to tell me about him. But she was still only a baby babbling syllables in a tongue where Simon was more fluent, and now the progression of the dance was forcing them apart from one another again. Felice’s feet grew heavy, even as her steps remained perfect.

Okay, something I like about this passage is that Felice and Simon are bonding, which is something canon should give us more of. I like being able to play with the politeness demanded of Felice by society at large, versus what Felice actually wants to say in a conversation, and how she negotiates that.

Felice is also on the verge of discovering her queerness here—something that Simon already understands about himself and has language for—but that Felice doesn’t quite have words for yet. She senses a kinship between herself and Simon, but she doesn’t quite know how to articulate it. In the passages and chapters that follow, Felice discovers more about herself and begins to embrace it. I was very conscious to make platonic friendships an important part of her queer self-acceptance journey. Felice’s choice to elevate friendships to the same level as the romantic relationship she eventually becomes part of… that’s important to me!

Queer friendship hits different and sometimes it makes me sad when queer texts over-emphasize the romantic aspects of being queer while downplaying the platonic stuff. So I decided to write what I wanted to see in the world.

Sara

When Sara and Simon were children, their Pappa told them about the whales he’d seen on his voyages. Pappa narrated grand bedtime stories about the creatures, moving his hands and changing the volume of his voice so that Sara could imagine the suddenness of a splash, the massive arc of a tail breaking through the waves. If you were patient, he said, you could see a whale coming up for air. Sara used to cling to Simon as she listened, half scared and half exhilarated. For Sara to be able to sleep at all, Simon had to remind her that the whales couldn’t get them on land.

Secrets, Sara later came to understand, swam under her skin like whales swam under the water. They moved with just as much magnitude. Sometimes, for a moment, she could forget about a secret and it wouldn’t bother her. Given enough time, however, a secret needed air. It too would force itself to the surface so that Sara could keep breathing.

Sara is probably the POV character I write who is the most influenced by the work I’ve done in poetry. My MFA advisor last fall really worked with me on images, and we spent a lot of time studying image systems in novels-in-verse. I’m pretty sure these two paragraphs were influenced by that study. Like, whales = secrets. Okay, Blue.

Sara’s memories play an important role for me in shaping her motivations and core emotions. I like including lots of glimpses of what her and Simon were like as little kids. I know we’re all hoping to get more Eriksson family backstory in season 3, and I hope for that too, so it’s something I try to include in my writing. As difficult and horrifying as things probably got with Micke at times, I think it’s also important to show moments where he’s taking care of Simon and Sara and being their father. These memories are now sad and bittersweet for Sara because of Micke’s abuse, and  they’re also an important part of understanding her and how she views herself.

August

He cast his gaze in another direction, where Sara Eriksson was curtseying to Prince Wilhelm and taking her leave. Thank goodness those two would not be dancing another set together. Now why was His Highness going off on his own again? Didn’t he understand that you could win over influential families by flirting with their daughters? And if Wilhelm was going to be king someday, August thought, he ought to have at least one mistress, for the sake of convention. Though August would never say such a thing to his cousin the queen, he could not understand why Wilhelm so insisted on cultivating a chaste appearance. It made no sense, given his position.

Anyhow! If everyone wanted to dismantle the social hierarchy this evening, why couldn’t August ask Sara Eriksson to dance and make Felice feel as slighted as he did? He wouldn’t of course, since Miss Eriksson had started the trouble between him and Felice in the first place, and August wanted to prove he could avoid such trouble. Flexing his fingers, he made his way through the crowd, toward the doors that opened onto the garden terrace. If he was going to let himself pine and rage, he might as well do it in the darkness. The English Lord Byron, with all his poetry of ill repute, could only approve of such a pose.

OH AUGUST. I wrote this passage as an homage to Susanna Clarke, whose descriptions of Lord Byron in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell had me in stitches. Clarke is divinely talented at writing self-important men and their warped perspectives of the world, so I find myself inspired by her a lot when I’m writing from August’s point of view.

August is not a reliable narrator, obviously, and I like playing with how his perceptions of events change with time. Like, no, Sara did not start the trouble between him and Felice; he started it and flirted with Sara. But of course, August is the most wounded ever, you guys. He is so brooding he could just write (bad) poetry about it. In the next few paragraphs (not shared here) August’s thoughts start to drift toward more in the direction of Freudian death drive ideations (maybe with some Freudian sex drive thrown in, I mean why the hell not.) I found it an interesting writing challenge in terms of transitioning over-the-top ridiculousness toward the more more serious stuff that sort of hints at the traumatized core of the character.

I highly encourage that every Young Royals fan (who can do so from a place of emotional safety) try writing from August’s perspective at least once. It is a solid exercise and you will learn a lot from it!

Kristina

As a devout monarch, Kristina knew that the world to come offered far more than the world she’d been placed in charge of. The Lord had brought so many of her dear family members home to heaven—her father, her husband Ludwig, her cousin Karl Johan, one unnamed daughter who only lived three days, and most recently Erik. Especially during the Easter season, Kristina could push through the hollowness of her grief and tell herself that at the end of life, salvation waited for those dear to her. If anything had happened to her Wilhelm last night, however, it would have shaken her faith the way cannonfire might shake the windows of a building.

Wilhelm was Kristina’s miracle; she had thought of him that way since he was very little, fighting through his sick spells. At that age, when he felt well enough, he would sit at her knee in the evenings and listen to her stories of what she’d done as queen during the day. He would often repeat back the details of a particular state visit or conflict between nobles, and would do so in such a way that Kristina felt more equipped to solve the problem at hand. Then at night, Wilhelm would sleep with his arms tucked around a pillow, looking so angelic that Kristina couldn’t help reaching out stroking her son’s silk-soft hair in a way she didn’t when he was awake. No, she did not want Wilhelm among the angels just yet. So she thanked God, and then thanked Him again, and then asked Him to guide Wilhelm as he got closer to taking the throne.

Sigh. Kristina. You do love your son, you are just… so bad at showing it. And in this universe you are so, so very Protestant. I like how I managed to tie all that together here, and give this little flashback into who Kristina has lost and how she thinks back on her life. I often access a core emotion when writing each of my POV characters, and Kristina’s emotion is grief. I also think you can tell Kristina sees the similarities between Wilhelm and herself. Sometimes that means she sees him as an extension of herself, which is I think where the conflicts between them start.

Similarly to August, I highly encourage every Young Royals fan (who can do so from a place of emotional safety) to write from Kristina’s perspective at least once. She’s worth the investment of your writing time!

Anyway I hope that was all a fun behind the scenes…

[majestativa]

I lend you my lips, beloved, pull down Silence on them.

— JACQUES WERUP ⚜️ Contemporary Swedish Poetry, transl. by John Matthias & Göran Printz-Påhlson, (1980)

[doomedandstoned]

Montréal Ambient Post-Hardcore Troupe MILANKU Unveil New Music Video

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

It's the weekend! Time for deep breaths and a slower pace and reflection. At least time enough to check out the new music video from MILANKU. The five-member Montréal band conjures an ethereal sound that takes advantage of ambient soundscapes to drop a robust blend of post-everything.

Milanku's new record is entitled 'À l'aube' (2023), which translates to "At dawn." Each track on the album takes a que from there, starting with misty atmosphere, perhaps representing various stages of the rising sun. This is followed by a radiant post-rock instrumental push with post-hardcore vocal inflections.

The band sings in French, as well, with lyrics inspired by the poetry of French-Czech writer Milan Kundera (b. 1929), who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being -- a book that muses about philosophical themes like time, happiness, and eternal return (the idea that everything in the universe repeats itself).

In fact, the song titles themselves are each piece of a poem, which like the music delves into poignant feelings of loneliness, despair, and consolation. Milanku gave us this window into their creative process:

Most of the skeleton of the album was built before the pandemic. After a few months of downtime, we refined and modified the songs and recorded the songs in two studio sessions. The pandemic had an impact on the sound of all the songs on the album. Without the pandemic, the result of the album would not be the same at all. The album sounds like a whole, a maturity of the band and a story that is told from the first note to the last.

Having revealed the opening track already, today Milanku reveals the album closer: "À l'aube; nous sommes disparus" ("At dawn; we will be gone"). It features Erika Angell from Thus Owls.

The most musically emotional track of the album, this song starts off as a sweet guitar melody and slowly turns into a storm featuring Erika’s voice as the grand priestess of this storm that everyone is trying to escape. The lyrics in Swedish and French make it even more mystical.

Milaku's À l'aube doesn't just rage against the gloom; it observes it, experiences it deeply, and reaches tirelessly towards hope. The sound absolutely envelops you in ecstatic glory by album's end. Look for it March 31st on Folivora Records (pre-order here). For fans of Cult of Luna, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Neurosis

Give ear...

WATCH & LISTEN: Milanku - "À l'aube; nous sommes disparus"

SOME BUZZ

If Milanku draws its origins from the work of Milan Kundera, the soundtrack is definitely more on the side of the thundering density of the being than of its "unbearable lightness", galvanized by the Czech author.

From the start, Milanku hammers out its brutal character, infused with melancholy, even dystopia, and standing straight upright on the wire: defiant, shouting, and inspired.

Mesmerized by the warrior's rage, flayed by its own doldrums, the quartet relies on pared-down arrangements and an oft-staged vocal presence, harmonizing like an instrument, and howling at the big time, but plastered with a disquieting sense of dilettante.

À l'aube by Milanku

At the heart of the enterprise, tearing off the peels of flapping skins, we explore the state of affairs of the contemporary genre, tragic, desolate, where any notion of common sense seems diffuse in the amalgam of trompe-l'oeil. The texts are meditative, inquisitive and the observations that emanate from them, weep and persist in trying to make sense of it, through its ever-growing losses of illusion.

With four full-length releases behind them, Milanku presents today 'À l'aube' (2023), a five-track burn that breathes new life into a caste of disenfranchised people, imbued with a disarming lucidity, and gives itself a framework and a voice to pull its head out of the swamp.

Photo by Nick Shaw

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[lohkeminie]

Musings on Saami Poetry - Part Two

This essay was originally written by Johan Sandberg McGuinne and Anne Wuolab and published by Versopolis Review in March 2023. The original can be accessed here: Musings on Saami Poetry Part Two

TO TRANSLATE ONESELF IS AN ACT OF SURVIVAL

I.

You ought to survive, or you will die.

II.

Johka. Gáicarássi lieđđu. Ii mihkkege danne leat summal geavvan.

III.

How does a language heal?

IV.

The heteroglossia of contemporary Saami poetry is both a defining characteristic of a literature that defies preconceived, Western notions of what poetry is and should be in order to be valid, and a decolonial response to decades of fierce assimilation politics aimed at stripping the Saami of their languages.

In this essay, we posit that Saami writers, whether they want to or not, are forced constantly to consider what it means to be or not to be writing in an endangered indigenous language, and that this choice, in turn, has been implicitly linked to Western ideas of authenticity from the outset. In addition, Saami poets are constantly being told that their art is intrinsically political, and thus primarily gestural, but, to quote the Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, ‘problematizing the indigenous is a Western obsession’.

Since the early 1900s, Saami writers have repeatedly argued against stereotypical depictions of our people and, in a certain sense, of our autonomy which acknowledges our own worldview and languages. This is true both of poets and others. In 1920, the Ume Saami agitator Karin Stenberg stated that we, as Saami, ‘do not want to be seen as guinea pigs,’ echoing Elsa Laula, who sixteen years earlier pointed out that the Swedish state had gone so far as to deny the Saami ‘our right to exist.’

Despite a literary void in the wake of the 1920s, due to decades of fierce assimilation politics throughout Sápmi, these arguments found a new audience at the beginning of the 1970s, in particular through the newly founded ČSV movement which argued for Saami self-determination, clearly inspired by the Civil Rights Movement in the USA. ČSV started both as a political and as a literary movement that sought to revitalise not only our languages but our culture as well, ‘functioning as a process of awakening and of the formation of a common [Saami] identity.’

In 1972, one of the movement’s founders, Anders Guttormsen, said of ČSV, that the letters ‘mean nothing on their own […] they do not translate as ‘life’ in Saami, but they can give life to so many things if they’re being interpreted correctly.’

Čájet Sámi Vuoiŋŋa.

Show Saami Spirit.

Is it possible to show Saami spirit through the medium of a colonial language?

Čohkke Sámiid Vuitui.

Gather the Saami and lead them to victory.

Is this theorised victory problematic to a Western mindset because it gives the subaltern agency where the majority previously has afforded it none?

V.

Saami literature is far too often dismissed as peripheral, and Sápmi itself is either envisioned as stagnant, or peculiarly picturesque by the majority. This statement is easily backed up by the fact that ethnographic books about the Saami, written by self-appointed experts on our culture and well-meaning tourists alike, heavily outnumber actual books by Saami writers. Thankfully, contemporary Saami writers and poets have long fought against this, and they often redefine the very borders of our culture, by challenging preconceived notions of ‘Saaminess’ and what a Saami can or cannot write about.

While written Saami poetry in many ways can be said to function as a natural extension of yoiking, contemporary Saami poetry is at the same time characterised by an oftentimes postmodern approach to language and literature. Not only that; where Western poets may have been easily defined as belonging to a certain literary period or style, Saami poets have a tendency to fuse different styles and techniques in order to create something that is both uniquely Saami, and at the same time both global and local in its outlook.

Indeed, Saami poets like Inger-Mari Aikio, Sigbjørn Skåden, Rönn-Lisa Zakrisson and Timimie Märak try their hand today at haikus, free verse and strict metric lines, drawing upon the style of Shakespeare, Milton and Matsuo Bashō alike, in order to write about everything from miners’ protests and language loss to oral sex and stage fright.

Or, to quote Sigbjørn Skåden, ‘Lord, please, if I have to puke / keep my Saami clothes clean at least!’

VI.

To weave oneself back and forth between tongues is both a blessing and a curse.

To write in a language often predicted to disappear, long before your own bones have been laid to rest, does something to you.

VII.

Language is both art and identity.

It functions as a basic mode of communication as much as a powerful tool of subversion. To paraphrase the Saami poet Paulus Utsi; a language can both be ensnared and used to ensnare others.

Contemporary Saami poets approach the issue of language in a number of different ways. This is partly because of the symbolic value speaking a Saami language has earned in Sápmi, both as a way to assert and express a sense of Saaminess, and partly because the choice to write or not to write in a Saami language continues to be seen as a highly political one.

To some poets, like the North Saami artist, artivist and writer Niillas Holmberg, writing in a Saami language is the undisputed norm. To him, writing in North Saami constitutes an act of both self-love and resistance.

At the same time, Holmberg is acutely aware of the importance placed upon colonial majority languages, as tools of assimilation and as ways of reaching a wider audience. In Assimilašuvdna Blues, he questions this unequal relationship between a colonised people and its colonisers, by pointing out the ways in which the educational systems throughout Sápmi historically have functioned as willing and active perpetrators of a cultural and linguistic genocide, going as far as to ask ‘if school is really the solution / if you have the assimilation blues?’

Throughout his writing, Holmberg frequently returns to the issue of language, both as a mode of communication and as a way to assert his own Saami identity from within. On the one hand, he criticises the state policies that have rendered his and other Saami languages critically endangered – ‘what can I say / to you who tend gardens / making a flowerbed of my mouth / ready for the big sleep’. On the other, he does not shy away from uneasy questions of personal responsibility, asking if the writing of a piece called ‘assimilation blues’, by virtue of giving it an English name, would not also be a form of assimilation in itself, betraying his fidelity to his mother tongue.

To overcome these issues, Holmberg, alongside many other Saami writers, has turned to self-translations that border on rewriting and re-imagining Saami thoughts through the medium of the majority language.

Some poets, like Juvvá Pittja, even make us question the difference between a translation and an interpretation.

On the one hand, Juvvá Pittjá tends to offer fairly literal translations of his poems, produced in close relationship with his grandmother, the renowned poet Inghilda Tapio. Thus, when he asks ‘manne du álbmot oažžu duolbmut /mu álbmoga,’ the Swedish translation resists the urge to rephrase or explain, and instead comes across as rather plain. In many cases, however, such as in the Swedish translation of the poem ‘Beaivvaš vel rattis’, his verse-translations work just as much as poems in their own right, for instance through the clever use of rhyming schemes and alliteration, thereby transcending the limitations of one language to give voice to a similar, yet slightly different thought in another language.

VIII.

Translation, at its core, both entails and ultimately demands transformation. Not only that, a translation constitutes a series of biased, subjective choices, and as such nothing is ever truly objectively speaking translatable.

To many Saami writers, the loss of language within our own community, continues to be one of the key issues that affect their style of writing. In Iŋgos Máhte Iŋgá’s poem ‘Sáme nissonolbmot’, which functions both as a critique of colonialism, Western patriarchal definitions of womanhood, and lateral violence, this becomes clear when the Saami identity of several of the women described is questioned because they do ‘not have / the right accent’ or, even if they ‘want […] to be a Saami / [… they do] not speak the language.’

Today, the majority of Saami literature written in Saami languages remains untranslated. A precious few writers have managed to find an international audience, and most of them have chosen to write their prose in Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish, rather than in a Saami language. It may then come as a surprise that a large number of contemporary Saami poets actively oppose translation into a majority language. One of them is the poet Helga West, who has said that her poetry collection Gádden muohttaga vielgadin was too personal for her, too concerned with a Saami response to an intercultural divorce, to allow it to be translated into or rewritten in Finnish. To this day, the poems remain largely untranslated, and when translations have been produced, they have been made in close collaboration with the poet herself.

The choice not to translate oneself also speaks to a certain sense amongst contemporary poets that the Saami voice finds itself in a dangerous position where outsiders still try to co-opt and redefine what it means to be a Saami. Thus, by not translating oneself, these writers maintain a sense of power and control over their work, which has often been denied Saami artists, writers and musicians in the past.

Other poets have started a conscious shift from translating themselves into rewriting themselves. Rather than offering up a translation of a poem that was originally written in a Saami language, they write their own versions of the poem in the majority language instead. One could, of course, argue that this strips the reader of the potential to fully engage with a poem’s linguistic ambiguity, but as the majority of readers, whether Saami or not, do not read Saami, we argue that, at a time when more and more people want to engage with Saami stories for numerous different reasons, this decolonial approach to translation is a sound and, in many ways, necessary one.

Having said that, whether contemporary Saami poets continue to write and rewrite their own poems in different languages, or end up working with translators to reach a wider audience, one thing is certain – the future of Saami literature is bright.

[yeswearemagazine]

The Side Look of a Barcelonese #1 983 : Abstract. © Matti Merilaid aka Street Matt:

The Side Look of a Barcelonese #1 983 :  Abstract. © Matti Merilaid aka Street Matt :

[hoursofreading]

Child was an intensely philosophical thinker. I mean this in several ways. First, she was a champion at argumentation. Her 1833 book An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans is one sustained attempt to clear the underbrush of bad arguments that kept most white Americans from recognizing that enslaving other humans was evil. It marshals evidence from economics, history, politics, and religion, culminating in an appeal to her fellow Northerners to see their complicity in slavery’s existence. She was ingenious at finding ways to call her fellow Americans to consistency. She demanded that they see that their pride in American democracy was misplaced if that democracy held others in bondage. She exhorted them to recognize that admiring Revolutionary War heroes for their resistance to taxation on the one hand but condemning enslaved people for fighting for freedom on the other was hypocritical. In the Appeal and dozens of other antislavery publications, she displayed argumentative skills that would make any philosopher proud. It also turned out, to my astonishment, that Child herself was deeply influenced by German philosophers of the period I had been studying. She regularly quotes Schiller, Herder, Lessing, and Jean Paul Richter; she was familiar with both Kant and Hegel. Even more astonishing to me (although, in retrospect, it should not have been): she was influenced by women philosophers I had only recently been learning about through Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar’s work, such as Germaine de Staël and Bettina Brentano von Arnim. Child adored Die Günderode, a book written by von Arnim about the philosopher Karolina von Günderrode and translated from German by Margaret Fuller; Child herself wrote an popular biography of Staël. Child grounded her activism in a philosophical yearning for answers to the big questions. Early in her life, Child turned to the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist, theologian and mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg for insights. Swedenborg taught that God was a god of love who expressed that love through the world, especially through nature and poetry. Through Swedenborg, Child embraced a holism in which all truths, and all humans, were essentially connected. That unified truth, she also believed, was best expressed through actions that replicated the love God had for his creation. Swedenborg led Child to a Platonic belief that reality as we know it was an emanation of the divine, although humans could see that truth only dimly. Child shared this deep admiration of Swedenborg with founding members of the emerging transcendentalist movement; her close contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson counted Swedenborg as one of humanity’s “representative men.” Early in her life and during one of the abolitionist movement’s most volatile periods, Child channeled her understanding of Plato and Swedenborg into a novel called Philothea, which included historical characters such as Plato, Anaxagoras, and Alcibiades as well as the eponymous Philothea, granddaughter of Anaxagoras and a woman deeply formed by philosophical ideas.

[clementinecompendium]

Reading June 2023

Read: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers

Reading: Discovering Your Soul Signature: A 33-Day Path to Purpose, Passion & Joy by Panache Desai Make a Name for Yourself: 8 Steps Every Woman Needs to Create a Personal Brand Strategy for Success by Robin Fisher Roffer Poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge Don't Read Poetry by Stephanie Burt The Essex Serpent: A Novel by Sarah Perry The Yellow Fairy Book ed. Andrew Lang

Series / General Interest: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories..." anthologies Dorothy L. Sayers Omnibus of Crime (series) * Jack Zipes * music theory * Tintin / Hergé

To Read: The Poisoner's Handbook ed. Raymond T. Bond Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural ed. Henry Mazzeo A Treasury of Great Mysteries ed. Howard Haycraft & John Beecroft Folklore 101: An Accessible Introduction to Folklore by Dr. Jeana Jorgensen Fairy Tales 101: An Accessible Introduction to Fairy Tales by Dr. Jeana Jorgensen Babel by R. F. Kuang Singing School by Robert Pinsky The Sober Lush by Jardine Libaire, Amanda Ward Swedish Folktales and Legends by by Lone Thygesen Blecher, George Blecher From the Forest by Sara Maitland Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger by Soraya Chemaly The Elements of Song Craft: The Contemporary Songwriter’s Usage Guide To Writing Songs That Last by Billy Seidman Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong The Hunter and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused -- and Start Standing Up for Yourself by Beverly Engel The Assertiveness Guide for Women: How to Communicate Your Needs, Set Healthy Boundaries & Transform Your Relationships by Julie de Azevedo Hanks, PhD, LCSW Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World by Nina Kraus You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief by David Kessler The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Oprah Winfrey Sensitive Is the New Strong: The Power of Empaths in an Increasingly Harsh World by Anita Moorjani Rude: Stop Being Nice and Start Being Bold by Rebecca Reid The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World by Trevor Cox The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

Bedtime Reading: A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath The French Revolution by Ian Davidson The Blue Fairy Book ed. Andrew Lang

[ashleysingermfablog]

Wk 3, Feb 24th, 2024 Research

Floriography

Ashley singer, fuchsia ii, 2024, film

From the text: Floriography: The Secret Language of Flowers in the Victorian Era…

Victorian botanical research created the fundamental understanding of modern symbolic flora interpretations.

Classifying the plants of the known world to a value of emotional fact was part of the Enlightenment’s late 18th century interest in aligning scientific understanding to all elements of life. 

Historical and classical values of known species were carried into human rationale for what the particular meaning of a flower could be. International discovery allowed  botanists to  illustrate and travel back from foreign lands with new species. Joseph Banks (1743-1820), a notable naturalist/botanist, travelled with Captain Cook and catalogued an estimated 30,000 plant specimens and was the first European to document 1,400. Banks was the president of the Royal Society and advised George III on the development of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, sending botanists internationally to collect species of plants. His published work expanded the public’s fascination with the natural world and allowed authors to use these discoveries to publish their work. Henry Phillips’ Floral Emblems was published in 1825, The Language of Flowers with Illustrated Poetry by Frederic Shoberl was published in 1839 and The Illustrated Language of Flowers by Mrs L. Burke in 1856 set the standard for the botanical and poetic meaning of flora in jewellery design. 

Known as ‘floriography’, the cataloguing of flora was an important philosophical exercise for understanding the meaning of poetry. The relationship between poetry and written English in jewellery relates directly to poesy rings and the designs of sentimental jewels. Men and women could customise their jewels with the designs of flowers, outlining the hidden meaning between lovers. In the 18th century, the English language was developing into a universally understood language through education and mass publication. Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755, bolstering the public’s accessibility to understanding the written word. The printing press allowed for gazettes, magazines and newspapers to be rapidly printed and circulated within society. The Enlightenment’s fascination with the cataloguing of the natural world, combined with the poetry of the late 18th century’s Romantic movement, led to a public demand for understanding the emotional/symbolic meaning of flora. Mary Wortly Montagu (1689-1762) introduced floriography to England in 1717, as she was a prolific writer and traveller to Turkey. Gazettes and magazines of the late 17th century published work from travellers about their adventures and ignited the public’s imagination. Her contemporary, Aubry de La Mottraye (1674–1743), introduced floriography to the Swedish court in 1727. One of the earliest publications was Joseph Hammer-Purgstall’s Dictionnaire du language des fleurs, published in 1809, followed by Louise Cortambert’s Le Language des Fleurs in 1819. 

1736, A book of jewellers work design’d by Thomas Flach in London. V&A Museum.

Floriography is simply a fancy name for the language of flowers. Within the art of floriography, every flower carries its own special meaning or symbolism, and this can also be influenced by its variety and colour. Some of the hidden meanings of flowers and other vegetation, come directly from the root name which was sometimes based from mythology, i.e. “narcissus” would correspond to egotism. Other meanings came from the flowers directly.  The colors, medical properties and even “magical” superstition surrounding these flowers helped create this hidden “language”.  Below are some of the more obvious connections from the Victorian Era.

The coded language of floriography meant that Victorians could express affection, desire or disdain, allowing a society governed by strict etiquette to show its true feelings. Now the language of flowers is popular again, writes British author Emma Flint.

Flowers have a longstanding tradition as a means of emotional expression. When we wish to convey our affection, joy or condolences, and words won't suffice, we rely on their beauty. Through the art of floriography, a coded means of communication more commonly referred to as the language of flowers, emotional intimacy has been allowed to flourish where it may otherwise be repressed. 

"Flowers, as gifts or for special occasions, can be all the more thoughtful when using the language of flowers. This could be based on the colour, or the type of the flower, or both," explains Harriet Parry, a florist for Bloom & Wild. "Floriography has been around for thousands of years, but we still have customers today asking for flowers that mean something special to them, either personally or through their symbolic meaning."

"Young women of high society in this era embraced the practice, sending bouquets as tokens of love or warning, wearing flowers in their hair or tucked into their gowns, and celebrating all things floral." Roux explains. "Many of them created small arrangements of flowers, called tussie-mussies or nosegays, by combining a few blooms in a small bouquet. Worn or carried as accessories, these coded messages of affection, desire, or sorrow allowed Victorians to show their true feelings in an enigmatic and alluring display." 

Charlotte de la Tour's Le Langage des Fleurs, published in 1819, was the first book of its kind that detailed the immense symbolism of flowers. 

fuchsia, ashley singer, 2024, film

I love the bead like quality of fuchsia, they hang as a collective and fall if knocked onto the garden floor