Author: Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
A Poem About Kebab
is this your moaning dog, sorry, no pets, is this your bag, your children, is this your weakness, your hunger,…
Literature In The Land Of The Inherently Cute
(Practically) all political writing engages in representation and a form of adjudication—i.e. “picking a side”. Classic social realist writing of…
On The Urgent Necessity Of Banning Poets
Plato, in The Republic, wished to ban all poets. He felt their work was neither ethical, philosophical nor pragmatic—that poetry…
The Art Of Any Impact
The most important thing to keep in mind during a fistfight (or while writing a poem) isn’t what to do…
May Oral Gnarr Annualise?
Municipal decree stardate 01012021-001 — January 1st, 2021. State anarchosurreo- separatist municipality of central Laugavegur and the united TGIFs of…
This Is Your Brain On Crack Cocaine
Each year, for about eight weeks, Icelandic book culture loses its cool and turns into a crazed media circus. When…
So Is The Wasteland
Oh, alright, I’ll admit it: I don’t understand most poetry. It baffles me. I read it, shaking my head and…
Future Perfect Poetry
When this text is eventually published the world will know who received the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. It will…
Quiet, You Ignorant Booby!
Anything an author does (or says) is viable to be used as evidence against (or for) her (or him). Their…
Making Perfect Sense
Poetry is the art of the illogical, or even anti-intellectual, performed with the tools of logic and intellectual zealotry: language….
Experimentalism is a Humanism
A few days ago (the rather awful) writer’s magazine Writer’s Digest tweeted the following: “Free short story competition to raise…
There´s A New Screen In Town
So far poetry has proved far more adaptable to a higher-and-higher high-tech world than prose fiction, which clings to the…
Reading The Eddas (With Google Translate)
Living abroad I regularly get asked about this miraculous language I speak—Icelandic—and if it’s true that we make new words…
Gung Ho
Hot-shot Chinese businessman, millionaire poet and patron-of-the-arts, Huang Nubo, recently decided to start a fund to promote the cultural relations…
Cotery Poelumn: Pwoermds
It’s a poetic mouthful—a hard-to-perform sound poem in its own right—“pwoermd”. When you Google it the machine asks if you…
Inscribed Round The Rectum Of A Hollywood Superstar
The Kindle, the iPad, the Nook, the Cybook Opus, the Sony Reader, the iLiad—and now: Megan Fox’s right flank. We’ve…
The Icelandic Poetry Community
A reader recently asked, by way of my editor, that I share a few words on the Icelandic poetry community….
Mad Skills
Recently I read on the news that a man, one Kenny Strasser, had successively duped the producers of numerous TV-programmes…
Left, Right And Centre
A self-righteous rant One of the greatest conservative projects in poetry is called New Formalism. In short, it supports the…
Cannon Fodder
I regularly read poetry to Aram, my infant son. He doesn’t “get it,” of course—no matter how I try to…
Segregating the poor
The Icelandic charity organization Fjölskylduhjálp (Family Aid) helps hundreds of families a month. Fjölskylduhjálp, like its sister organizations Hjálparstofnun Kirkjunnar…
The Barbaric Arts
The philosopher Theodor Adorno famously stated in 1949 that writing a poem after Auschwitz was barbaric. He proceeded: “And this…
So What, You Gonna Cry Now?
Most poetry’s pretty fucked up. It tries hard to be hard. Not only hard to understand, but also hard to…
The Death Of A Poem
Poetry is a culture heavily impregnated with the idolisation of poets. Popular knowledge of poetry stops where the anecdotes about…
Poetry and Prose
The difference between poetry and prose? Poetry sings, prose talks. Poetry dances, prose walks. Poetry’s fewer words with more (“deeper”)…