Poetry
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Poet Þórarinn Eldjárn Eulogizes King Of Sweden
Author Þórarinn Eldjárn has now concluded his series of “drápas”, written and performed for each of Scandinavia’s three sovereigns: two kings and one queen. Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden was the last to receive his drápa, as it was recited to him,…
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Future Perfect
On “The Story Island,” a fresh young crop of writers is busy carving out a space, making way, creating a culture all of their own, in defiance of what came before. Much like their predecessors, and their predecessors’ predecessors Icelanders’ rich literary…
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Talkin’ ’bout my generation
I used to joke, privately, that there are two kinds of poets in the world: on the one hand, mathematicians, and on the other, magicians. While such simplifications obviously trivialise a craft that is really quite multifarious—I am large, I contain multitudes—I’ve recently come…
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Poetry Takes Over Harpa
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, what a woman! Having interviewed her for the current feature story of Grapevine (in stores now, soon to be online) about the literary scene in Reykjavík, but never having heard or read any of her poetry, I was excited…
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Kælan Mikla Grew Up, Are Going To Airwaves
Kælan mikla is a three-piece band that’s gotten a lot of attention since winning the City Library’s poetry slam competition last year, singing and screaming through their punk poetry. As Airwaves 2014 marks the band’s first appearance on the official festival programme,…
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Einar Ben’s Birthday To Be “Day Of The Poem”
Illugi Gunnarsson, Minister of education, science and culture, has proposed that October 31 will from now on be designated as the “Day of the Poem”. October 31 is, as the Minister reasoned, the birthday of 19th century industrial entrepreneur and romantic poet…
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Microphonic Body Machine
Ekeberg Park, Oslo: The September sun reflects in yellow leaves. Angela Rawlings and her colleagues reach the centre of the posh sculpture-park: a forest of glass. The walls capture, care for, and feed back the voice of Angela and a partner in…
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Poet Tattoos Demand That Minister Resigns
Tuesday, August 12, 2014. Poet Bragi Páll Sigurðarson just disclosed his new tattoo. It is situated on his right thigh, just above the knee. Unlike most tattoos, this one is written in Times New Roman. One sentence, split in two lines, it…
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Homey and Cosy
We are in a small church, beside a small lake, in a small city in the far, far North. On a not-so cold November night, Christ, arms aloft in a gesture of welcome (or an attempt to kill his followers with his…
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The Icelandic Poetry Community
A reader recently asked, by way of my editor, that I share a few words on the Icelandic poetry community. My first response was a long-winded, athletic “boooooooring” while I rolled my eyes and pretended to gag. For a while I was…
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Mad Skills
Recently I read on the news that a man, one Kenny Strasser, had successively duped the producers of numerous TV-programmes into putting him on the air on the premise that he was a master in the art of the yo-yo. When put…
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Left, Right And Centre
One of the greatest conservative projects in poetry is called New Formalism. In short, it supports the return to rhymed metrical verse and classical themes. It’s a let’s-write-like-Keats kinda movement, originally associated with the yuppie culture of the 1980s, with that perverted…
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Cannon Fodder
I regularly read poetry to Aram, my infant son. He doesn’t “get it,” of course—no matter how I try to explain that he’s really not supposed to understand it but rather “sense it.” But he seems to like the rhythms of it…
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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 poets end and the poetry begins. We remember Rimbaud as the original rockstar, vomiting all over the Paris culture elite. We remember…
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NÝHIL ON TOUR
On a sunny Friday afternoon I sat down at Austurvöllur waiting for one of the founding members of the group Nýhil (pronounced nee-hil). I noticed the group last September on account of the massive amount of underground work published and the monthly…