Translations from Norwegian & Swedish
Hanne Bramness Weight of Light
Translated from Norwegian by Frances Presley, with the author. Bilingual edition.
Published 2017. Paperback, 82pp, 8 x 5ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848615465 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]
“She tries to conjure up places and situations which normal language does not reach, from which it has disappeared, and then let something unheard communicate with us across a distance for which we have no words. (…) What she adds is her fabulous gift of making her material physical.” —Hadle Oftedal Andersen, Klassekampen
“Hanne Bramness’ own voice gently finds its way through a common language, not as insistence but as a presence, where the spontaneous warmth of feeling and intellectual distance balance each other.” —Lennart Sjögren, Lyrikvännen
Hanne Bramness No Film in the Camera
Translated from Norwegian by Frances Presley, with the author. English only.
Published 2013. Paperback, 94pp, 9x6ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848612686 [Download a sample PDF from this book here]
ISBN 9781848612686 [Download a sample PDF from this book here]
Uten film i kameraet
(No film in the camera) is a collection of prose poems about photographs by professional photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Francesca Woodman, Bill Brandt, Letticia Battaglia and Jitka Hanzlová—and also about personal photos and recollections of photos, about what photographs reveal and conceal.
Hanne Bramness Salt on the Eye – Selected Poems
Translated from Norwegian by the author & Frances Presley. English only.
Published 2007. Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781905700417 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]
Hanne Bramness is one of Norway's leading poets, and a winner of the prestigious Dobloug Prize, awarded by the Swedish Academy. She is also well-known in her native country for her translations of English-language poets, such as Sylvia Plath and Selima Hill, as well as the Estonian poet Marie Under.
Helena Eriksson strata
Translated from Swedish by Jan Teeland and Wendy Klein. English only.
Published 2014. Paperback, 108pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848612747 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]
The poetry of Helena Eriksson can be positioned within the Swedish literary avant-garde associated with the poetry magazine and publishing house, OEI. It is her strong, unique voice, however, which qualifies her for consideration as one of the most interesting and influential Swedish poets of her generation.
In her alluring, almost filmic poems, she introduces themes of violence and treachery, through the use of doppelgängers and disguises. She is influenced here by a longer tradition represented by writers such as Genet, Bataille and Duras, where literature offers a site for the exploration of desire, rupture and identities in revolt. Motifs that in Eriksson are often articulated as sensuous and tactile, may also be stifled or smothered in layers of cloth, ruffles and ruffs, pearl necklaces, corsets, dresses and bows. As noted in one of the poems in strata, with its many references to Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I and their portraits: “Everything is costume”. That is, reality is a constant act of playing out desires and identities, and poetry is a mode of framing these just as precisely, but differently. —Hanna Nordenhök, poet and critic.
Kjell Espmark A Cloud of Witnesses
Translated from Swedish by Robin Fulton Macpherson
Published 2022. Paperback, 110pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
Published 2022. Paperback, 110pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
Kjell Espmark (b.1930) has been a member of The Swedish Academy since 1981, serving as Chairman of The Nobel Committee from 1988 to 2004. He has published twenty volumes of poetry, ten novels, and over a dozen volumes of literary criticism. Of the Spanish version of his latest book of poetry, Martín Lopez-Vega wrote in El Mundo: “The Creation
confirms that we are faced with one of the most important poets of our time.”
Many of Espmark´s poems are dramatic monologues in which the dead, some famous, some anonymous, speak to us, hoping for our attention. Another consistent feature of his poetry, and one which we can see extending over six decades, is the coherence we find within each volume, echoes and cross-references linking poems not only within a single collection but from book to book.
Kjell Espmark Bela Bartók Against the Third Reich
Translated from Swedish by Robin Fulton. English only.
Published 1985. A5 Paperback, 77pp, £8.95.
Published jointly with Oasis Books, London, and Norstedts, Stockholm.
ISBN 9780903375702
The first publication in English by one of Sweden's leading poets. The selection was made by the author and the translator from a trilogy of volumes published in Swedish in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Lars Amund Vaage The Red Place
Translated from Norwegian by Anna Reckin & Hanne Bramness. English only.
Published 2020. Paperback, 106pp, 9 x 6ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848617117 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]
Into the epic sweep of Lars Amund Vaage’s long poem The Red Place
come many presences in many dimensions: the living, the dead and – part-mythic, part-realist, part-surreal – the ghosts of earlier selves. Mother progresses through a series of ‘red places’ until she reaches somewhere ‘Her feet would go no further.’ Father ‘stands by me / outside of me / whistling notes / that don’t exist.’ We see the poet at the piano as a child and as an adult, and the joys and poignancy of music sound powerfully throughout. Moving tenderly between farmland and the city, great concert halls and a family going out in the evening on the tractor to find music, Vaage’s poetry is rich, simple, complex, and wise.
Lars Amund Vaage The Mute
Translated from Norwegian by Kenneth Steven. English only.
Published 2013. Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848612600 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]
The mute — perhaps especially he — can be expressive too. That is one of the claims/assertions Lars Amund Vaage develops in these poems. Many of the poems concern work. Work can also be creation, language, initiation. But, in the great circle of life and death, work can also represent a loss of meaning. Love is a central theme, with its power to create.
Lars Amund Vaage Outside the Institution — Selected Poems
Translated from Norwegian by Hanne Bramness and Frances Presley. English only.
Published 2010. Paperback, 104pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848610750 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]
The first collection in English by Lars Amund Vaage, one of the most significant poets and novelists of his generation in Norway.
