Black Orchids And White Spaces: Vónbjørt Vang On Winning The Nordic Council Prize For Literature

“Nobody’s going to read it,” Faroese writer Vónbjørt Vang told herself as she began to write the poems that would become Svørt Orkidé, meaning black orchid. “Just me and my tutor and some examination people,” she assumed, “and maybe my closest friends or colleagues.” She turned out to be quite mistaken. The book went on to win the Nordic Council Prize for Literature, the first Faroese title to win in 39 years, and has already been reprinted five times with translations into multiple languages on the way.

Writing around the subject

Although she was already full-swing in a successful literary career with two published collections of poetry under her belt, an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Copenhagen, and a job as a librarian, she decided to pursue a BA in Creative Writing to further hone her craft. “I was writing a whole lot of poetry that I basically didn’t like,” she remembers. “It was probably categorised as ‘good poetry’ in a sense, but to me, it lacked intensity and had no urgency. I felt like I was writing around a subject that I didn’t dare to approach.”

She refers to a very difficult time for her family. “Me and my son,” she elaborates. “He was distancing himself very extremely, probably going into drugs… And I didn’t dare write about it because it was too – I don’t know – too fragile or something.” Telling herself the book didn’t need to be published is how she empowered herself to write it. “And then something happened, which was amazing, because then I really had a sense of urgency about what I was writing. I sort of allowed myself to just go all in. It’s the writer, the poet takes over.”

So the poet took over and wrote through the subject rather than around it. Leaning heavily on imagery of the natural world to illuminate human relationships, Svørt Orkidé addresses “the wrongness and difficulty of watching your children stumble in life and you can’t help them. They won’t listen to you,” Vónbjørt says. “It’s not a book that you would want to write because it was a really tough thing.” She describes it a “chaotic process,” both that part of her life and the creation of the book about it. “But it became a really beautiful book and I really loved it,” she admits. “It was full of love and really raw and intense, but also like a love poem to my son, basically.”

Cancelling herself

Over a year after she’d finished her BA, with a bit of distance from the experience, she decided to publish the book. “Before I was to publish it, [my son] read it because I needed his consent,” Vónbjørt explains. “And he was not a fan. He was thinking I was just, you know, making a big deal out of nothing. So he just said, ‘Yes, yes, publish the book. I don’t care.’” She pressed on, fully aware of the short life cycle of publishing, especially with poetry. “I thought, yeah, yeah, I’ll just publish and then it will live its life, probably have one year. Books are easily forgotten, so I thought that was the thing.”

It wasn’t forgotten. Svørt Orkidé was published by Forlagið Eksil, won the Faroese Literary Prize, and was then nominated for the Nordic Council Prize. “And people started reading it,” she recounts, “and discussing it and they were even reading it in the schools… I didn’t understand the impact it would have on us because all of a sudden everyone was calling and congratulating and I was on TV talking about this book, which is actually about him and me. And so he got really angry with me at that time.”
“Svørt Orkidé addresses ‘the wrongness and difficulty of watching your children stumble in life and you can’t help them.'”

That’s when she asked herself, “What the fuck have I done? I’m actually exposing him and people are reading this. And I actually cancelled myself.” She cancelled all her readings, stopped translations into four languages, and even had the book pulled from all the bookstores in the Faroe Islands. “I promised him that I would not promote the book anymore. And I thought, I’m never going to win because Faroese people do not win this prize. And that was it. I was done with the book.” Then it won the Nordic Council Prize for Literature.

The power of poetry

This time, Vónbjørt was ready. “I told my son, and it was fine actually,” she explains, “because I was better at preparing him this time. I think he was just angry that I didn’t include him in the process more, so now he’s totally included.” He even travelled with her to Stockholm to receive the official award in October. “He’s actually quite happy and proud of the book now.” In the end, a book about the growing distance between a mother and her son has helped to shrink it.

The repercussions of the book are not only personal for Vónbjørt and her family. “It’s a good side effect of the prize also that I somehow have made people read poetry. People tend to say, ‘Oh, I can’t read poetry, it’s just too difficult. I have to decode something or figure out what this actually means.’ But my book is extremely raw and just straightforward.” She also cites the interdisciplinary nature of the text, fusing poetry with prose and pictures, as another element of its accessibility. “That’s also the beauty of poetry now,” she says. “It’s so experimental and so open, and that’s what I love about it. I think poetry is an experience more than anything else.”

“Literature is the only place where you can actually go backstage,” she continues, “the place where we actually get to experience other humans’ experiences. I don’t find any other artwork where we can actually really, really connect on a deep, deep level just by reading something on a white page with letters on it. It still amazes me that this is actually possible. And it just still surprises me,” she adds, “that people actually come over to thank me and say, ‘this is just the book that I needed.’”

Vónbjørt Vang will be reading at Mengi on January 16 at 20:00, alongside Sjón and Kim Simonsen. She will also be reading at The Nordic House (in Danish) on January 17 at 15:00.