LEND ME YOUR VOICE

lend-me-your-voice-kjell-espmark

Kjell Espmark

Translated by Robin Fulton MacPherson

Paperback
Publication Date: Spring 2011
99 Pages
ISBN13:  978-1-934851-22-7
USD $14.95 + Shipping

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Imagine moments when all the experience and all the values of a human being are condensed into a sudden insight. The universe of time surrounding you might then glitter like a milky way from such epiphanies – sometimes ecstatic, more often bitter but always with the luster of human understanding. Among them you could even suspect black holes, fortunes so bitter and inexplicable that they cannot emit any light at all. If we managed to pick up these various testimonies, how would they sound? It is the task of the poet to answer this question – a challenge that could be worded: “Lend me your voice!” The moments recreated in this way form a series of poems ranging from the earliest times to the present, a modest history on the margin of History. A similar catalogue was begun more than two thousand years ago by the anonymous Greek poets who gave voices to the many dead in the work known as The Greek Anthology – an inspiration also for Edgar Lee Masters in The Spoon River Anthology.

About the Author, Kjell Espmark  

About the Author Kjell Espmark (b. 1930) is a poet, novelist, and literary historian. He is also former professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Stockholm. Since 1981 he is a member of the Swedish Academy, and since 1988 a member also of its Nobel Committee (chairman 1988-2004). He has been awarded a considerable number of prizes, including the Bellman Prize (for poetry) and the Schück Prize (for literary criticism). Latest awards: The Great Prize of De Nio (“The Nine”) and The Tranströmer Prize. He is an officer of L’Ordre de Mérite.

About the Translator, Robin Fulton MacPherson  

About the Translator Robin Fulton Macpherson is a Scottish poet and translator. Recent poets translated include Norwegian Olav Hauge (Anvil Press Poetry, London, 2003) and Swedes Tomas Tranströmer (New Directions, N.Y. 2006) and Harry Martinson (from Bloodaxe). A bilingual selection of his own poems, translated and published by Margitt Lehbert, appeared in 2008.


Reviews

“Vintergata is the best collection of poetry published so far by a Swedish poet in the 21st century.”
— Svenska Dagbladet Newspaper



 

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