Category: Poetry

Posted on by

On the delight of dual-language editions

Students of languages will attest to the usefulness of dual-language editions, where the source text and the translation are presented on facing pages for ease of comparison – so we’re delighted to have published two such gems!

Dual-language editions enable the reader some insight into the decisions of the translator(s) – whether you’re learning a language, or engaging in literary criticism.

Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah’s facing-page translation of a new collection of Pentti Saarikoski’s poetry, A Window Left Open, is perfect for investigating the array of interpretations available. Take this snippet, for example:

no one has time
to think of the right metaphor.
The eyes of the stars
shut down,
the wind falls asleep in the cat basket.

…a plethora of possibilities!

Photo by Wil Stewart on Unsplash

But don’t take just our word for it: in the spirit of dual-language editions, here’s a second voice to add to ours – Jean Boase-Beier, Translations Editor, Arc Publications:

Part of the fascination of dual-language books is that a reader who does not speak the original language can see how words in the originals gradually become recognisable: bird; tree; shadow; poetry. It’s always the words used most often that become familiar, and so the themes of the poems emerge from the comparison of original and translation.

Boase-Beier has some kind words to say about A Window Left Open, too:

The poems are wonderfully detailed and beautifully structured. The translation is excellent: it captures the immediacy of the images and the shape of the poems […] This is definitely one I would have wanted to publish if it had been offered to us and I am very fussy!

You can purchase A Window Left Open at your preferred purveyor of poetry, or here. And if you’re buying one dual-language edition… why not buy two and make a pair? Our second dual-language edition is We Own the Forests by Hans Børli – the lumberjack poet!

Posted on by

A new selection of poems by Pentti Saarikoski

Herewith I cease the writing of poetry.
   I’m not swearing to it, mind.
Could be a window’s left open again
               by chance and a bird
                                       strays in:
   what helps it out, is a poem.

Pentti Saarikoski was a prolific translator and journalist, and a revered modernist poet central to the Finnish literary scene of the 1960s and 1970s. The inventiveness, warmth and humour of Saarikoski’s voice have made him something of a national treasure in Finland. His writing is at once playful and political, drawing on everyday life and current affairs, as well as Greek antiquity.

A Window Left Open collects poems chosen and translated by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah which chart Saarikoski’s artistic development over the decades from his early Greek period to his politically charged participative poetry, and ultimately his last known poem. This dual-language edition places the original Finnish poems side-by-side with their English translation, inviting readers to explore the elegant craftsmanship of Saarikoski’s use of language.

Pentti Saarikoski (1937–83) was born in Impilahti (today part of Russia) and died in Joensuu. He translated Homer’s Odyssey into Finnish and published his first collection, Runoja (Poems), in 1958. He developed his distinctive participative style in later collections and became a cult figure, partly because of his self-stylization as a Bohemian artist.


Emily Jeremiah is a writer, academic, and translator. She has published two selections of translated poetry, by Eeva-Liisa Manner and Sirkka Turkka, with Waterloo Press. She is also the author of two novellas, Blue Moments (Valley Press, 2020) and An Approach to Black (Reflex Press, forthcoming 2021).


Fleur Jeremiah is a native speaker of Finnish with wide experience in translating from Finnish across genres. She has collaborated with her daughter Emily on translations of modern Finnish poetry and of five novels, one of which, Aki Ollikainen’s White Hunger (Peirene Press), was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016.

A Window Left Open is available to order now.

Posted on by

Back to university: ebooks and reading lists

Where has the summer gone?! With the reading-hammocks being folded away and back-to-school beckoning, this week we’re highlighting two resources: our new ebook catalogue, and recommendations for university reading lists.

Hot off the (digital) press, our 2020 Ebook Catalogue collects together all the Norvik titles that are currently available for you to download and enjoy instantly on your Kindle or other e-reader device:

2020 Ebook CatalogueDownload

Vigdis Hjorth’s PEN award-winning A House in Norway, translated by Charlotte Barslund – a perfect choice for #WITMonth

Ilmar Taska’s acclaimed Pobeda 1946: A Car Called Victory, translated by Christopher Moseley

Kirsten Thorup’s timely The God of Chance, translated by Janet Garton

Jógvan Isaksen’s Walpurgis Tide, translated by John Keithsson – a slice of Faroese eco-crime

We hope to digitise more of our backlist in future, too.For those returning to campus – in-person, or remotely – we recommend some autumnal poetry: Hans Børli’s We Own the Forest: And Other Poems presents a dual-language text with facing-page English translations rendered by Louis A. Muinzer. This work by the ‘lumberjack poet’ – a phrase I’ve never had occasion to write before! – is ideal for Norwegian classes. Students of Finnish may also be interested in our forthcoming selection of poems by Pentti Saarikoski, A Window Left Open, jointly translated by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah and also in a dual-language format.

Posted on by

Celebration of a Man of Nature and a Most Loved Poet

Hans Børli is a Norwegian national treasure. Often pictured in his lumberjack gear or knitwear, he radiates comfort and warmth and is an image of the ultimate man of nature. His poems are still widely read and often quoted.  He was born on the 8th of December 1918 to a poor family. They lived on a remote farm deep in the Norwegian forests of Eidskog. He was a bright young man, but his education was cut short because of the war. Børli took part in the fighting against the Germans but was captured. Luckily, he was not deported to the work camps, but was released and worked as a teacher and a lumberjack for the remaining war years. And at the same time, he also wrote poetry. His first collection, Tyrielden, was published in 1945 to great acclaim and good sales. And he kept on writing, publishing works almost every year from then on. However, his popularity as a writer did not stop him from continuing his forest work; rather it was reinforced by it. Nature was his muse, and he was inspired when he spent time surrounded by the tranquil greenery. However, his poems are not merely romantic tributes to the beauty of the forest, but the forest rather serves as an animated allegory to illustrate the complexity and fragility of life. Børli’s works are filled with wise words about what it is to be a human being in this world.

To celebrate the centenary of his birth, we would like to pay tribute to him and his beautiful poems by posting some of them here alongside the English translations by Louis A. Muinzer.

 

Junikveld

Vi sitter i slørblå junikveld 
og svaler oss ute på trammen.
Og alt vi ser på har dobbelt liv,
fordi vi sanser det sammen.

Se – skogsjøen ligger og skinner rødt
av sunkne solefalls-riker.
Og blankt som en ting av gammelt sølv
er skriket som lommen skriker.

Og heggen ved grenda brenner så stilt
Av nykveikte blomsterkvaster.
Nå skjelver de kvitt i et pust av vind,
–  det er som om noe haster…

Å, flytt deg nærmere inn til meg
her på kjøkkentrammen!

Det er så svinnende kort den stund
vi mennesker er sammen.

June Evening

On the steps in the mist-blue evening
we sit in the cool June air.
And all that we see is double,
because it is something we share.

Look – the lake’s shining with scarlet
from the land of the sunsetting sky.
And bright as a piece of old silver
Is the diver’s red-throated cry.

And the bird-cherry’s burning in silence,
Its blossoms alight by the gate.
A breeze makes their white clusters tremble
– as if there is something can’t wait…

Oh, move yourself closer against me,
here by the kitchen door!
We are given a short time together,
then given no more.

 

Forbi

Forundelig
som kvelden ringer
høyhet fram i alt og alle…  

Selv kråkene
får gylne vinger
når de flyr i solefallet…

Beyond

So strange to see
how the evening rings
loftiness forth and makes things bright…

Even the crows
have golden wings
when flying in the sunset’s light…

These poems are taken from the volume We Own the Forests and Other Poems, Hans Børli, translated by Louis Muinzer. Browse and buy here.

Posted on by

Childhood by Kerstin Ekman

Childhood by Kerstin KemanKestin Ekman’s wonderful poem Childhood, now published by Norvik Press as a dual language English/Swedish publication. Translated from Swedish by Rochelle Wright.

Kerstin Ekman is primarily known as a novelist, but she has occasionally turned to free verse, especially when the subject is autobiographical. In 1993-1994, Swedish TV 1 conducted a series of talks with prominent writers under the rubric ‘Seven Boys and Seven Girls’. In place of an ordinary interview, Kerstin Ekman read aloud Barndom (Childhood). The poem, which was published for the first time in Swedish Book Review in 1995, appears here with original photographs kindly provided by the author. The prose passages are quotations from Ekman’s 1988 novel Rövarna i Skuleskogen (The Forest of Hours, transl. Anna Paterson, Chatto & Windus, 1998).

Childhood has a new foreword by Kerstin Ekman, translated by Linda Schenck. The volume also includes a bibliography of critical literature (largely in English) on the author and her work, plus a full list of Ekman titles available in English translation.

This publication was the initiative of Norvik Press director Helena Forsås-Scott, who sadly lost her life to leukemia before the project came to fruition. The book is dedicated to her. Norvik Press will donate the first year’s profit on sales of the publication to the Marie Curie charity in the UK in memory of Helena, who was cared for at the Marie Curie Hospice in Edinburgh in her final days.

Available to purchase from all good bookstores.