‘Mellem stationerne’

Newfound

Two small poems from my book Mellem stationerne  [Between stations] (2000) have traveled all the way to Austin, Texas. They appear in the latest issue of the journal Newfound – translated by the great, bilingual author Karen Havelin.

Three Poems i M-DASH

scene_showing_how_things_were_splintered_where_the_storm_was_most_severe_by_everett_james_e-_1834

The American magazine for translation M-DASH is publishing three of my poems in their Issue 9: summer 2016, beautifully translated by author and translator Karen Havelin.

Two of the poems are from the collections Mellem stationerne and Ofte stillede spørgsmål – the last one until now unpublished.

Andre stemmer

Hans Sydows og min fælles cd Mellem stationerne (2000) indgår i udstillingen Andre stemmer – kunst & hverdag, som åbner i morgen på Museet for Samtidskunst i Roskilde og vises til 23/8.

Cd-projektet – og bogen – udsprang af en installation på udstillingen Krydsfelt på museet tilbage i 1998.

Der er den lyd du vågner ved

Digt/musik-video til to skæringer, “Der er den lyd du vågner ved” og “Stadier”, fra cd’en Mellem stationerne (Resonance.dk 2000). Vist under Lyd+Litteratur i Århus i 2002.

Video, tekst, oplæsning: Christian Yde Frostholm.
Musik, produktion, breakbeats og samples: Hans Sydow.
Vokal: Rie Koch. Guitar: Peter Steenild. Kontrabas: Jacob Jensen.

It is a journey …

It is a journey I have never undertaken.
We saw just the landscapes from the air and landed,
stood at the railway station and struggled through the crowd,
slept in hotel rooms, when we finally found our way.
At most in a crack we faced single attractions,
armed with a camera and banknotes.
Lost our way in a hurry with a goal-oriented eye through the market,
drove restlessly through the mountains with the windows closed up,
looked hardly up, breathed only moderately.

Now I am applying for entry at night.
Request pictures, but am held back.
Wait for a favorable moment, for an open sesame.

There are mud walls and gates and blocked in streets.
There are scorched fields, shrunken oases,
the course of a river traced only with simple growths
and water you must imagine yourself –
a stony desert running into a sandy desert.
A rare juiciness in the shape of pomegranates’
bitter-sweet seeds, and only one by one,
while fingers and face get sticky,
the mirages of villages in the dust.
A flickering film above the ground,
A quiver somewhere in the shadow
in a lonesomeness swarming with ghosts:
Humans, trickling out of the drought.
Faces against the face, hands in around the body.

Step by step I seek in to a forest
of graying trunks with heavy leaves of plastic.
A rain poor of drops tries to reconcile.
Then I meet yet another wall.

It is an oven in the shape of a house
with black smoke out through the roof
and a suffocating smell of oxygen deficiency and soot.
The house has no doors.

It is a city, I visited blinded.
A fruit of soil I have held, but never bitten into.
A door, the wind managed to slam behind me,
until I get to turn around.
Now there is no way.

 

Mellem stationerne (Between Stations), 2000

Translated by Susanne Jorn for Danish Literary Magazine, Spring 2001

Mellem stationerne

mellem_stationerne(bog)450

Mellem stationerne
digte
Borgens Forlag (2000)

Se/læs de første sider af bogen

Se også Mellem stationerne [cd]

Selected poems in English by Karen Havelin in Newfound and M–DASH, and by Susanne Jorn previously published in Danish Literature Magazine.

Mellem stationerne [cd]

Mellem-stationerne-cd-omslag

Mellem stationerne
Cd
Komponisten Hans Sydow og digteren Christian Yde Frostholm.
Resonance.dk (2000)

Se/hør digt/musikvideoen Der er den lyd du vågner ved

Se også Mellem stationerne [bog]

Mellem stationerne [installation]

mellem-stationerne-installation2

Mellem stationerne
lydinstallation
Udstillingen Krydsfelt, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde 1998. Kurateret af Hans Sydow.
Porcelænshøjttalere: Morten Løbner Espersen.

Se også: Mellem stationerne [bog] og Mellem stationerne [cd]