Walking towards death, we need comfortable shoes

Life's no song

BY ANN-CHRISTINE SNICKARS

Kristina Lugn
Bye then, have a nice time!
Albert Bonniers Förlag. S

It is almost one and a half decades since Kristina Lugn's last volume of poetry. Instead she has turned her attention more towards the stage. Despite this, until recently her work has barely been performed in Finland at all, where theatre audiences would more than likely enjoy her skittish, almost absent-minded sarcasm and her love of people who seem bizarre, yet who at the same time are utterly normal.

There has always been a dramatic quality to Kristina Lugn's poetry. The clumsy, shackled couple Camilla and Kurt, familiar from her collection Om ni hör ett skott... (1979; If you hear a gunshot ... ), also appear in the cast of her liberating play about divorce, Rut och Ragnar (Rut and Ragnar) from 1997.

Relationships twisted by great, absurd, expectations or which only exist in fantasy - if we have the courage not to deny the discrepancy between longing and reality, and instead are prepared to debate it actively ... what happens then? We are left alone with our most glaring, basic needs, the need to belong, the need to be close to others. These are the things children need and cannot be lightly brushed aside. In one of the most laconic poems in her new collections, Kristina Lugn says: "I mitt sällskap har jag / ett barn som ropar / från jordens alla hörn" ('With me there is / a child crying out / from all the corners of the earth.')

Kristina Lugn can hardly be considered an ironist, she is more a combination of tragedian and satirist. The density of her work becomes almost palpable through her highly individual use of language. At first it can seem easy to copy, but it is not. Other people simply do not write like this.

Lugn's language exhibits a great malleability and one is often startled by how she manipulates meanings. This is of course the point Bye then, have a nice time! ('I have never been raped / in a particularly exclusive warehouse ...') is a rather terrifying, provocative example from an earlier collection.

Who other than Lugn would dare to entitle their return to poetry Hej då, ha det så bra! (Bye then, have a nice time!) The title of her new volume of poetry is not a quotation from a nursery school teacher, waving goodbye to the children after a long day, but comes from a truly awful pop song.

In fact, the song in many ways displays the same shamelessness as Lugn, but not an ounce of her artistry. Lugn points this out: "Jag är inte / en schlager. / Jag råkar bara handla / om samma saker." ('I am not / a pop song. / I just talk about / the same sort of things.') Now more consistently than ever, she has begun to combine any repressed longing for love with talk about death, something you never find in pop lyrics. Imagine some pop star singing "Jag skall unna mig en rejäl semester / efter dödskampen" ('I'll give myself a good holiday / after the pain of death') - what an effect that would have!

Death was always a more violent, lurking force in Lugn's earlier poems. It is hard to forget the poem from 1978, in which the speaker tries out various suicide methods - in vain: "Först svalde jag tvåtusen vesparax / sen skar jag av halspulsådern / sen satte jag eld på håret / ..." ('First I swallowed two thousand Vesparax / then I slit my carotid artery / then I set fire to my hair / ...')

The thought of suicide is also present in the new volume, only now it has been tamed to almost Roman restraint: "Den kommer att ta en halv sekund " ('It will take half a second'). Death is not seen as the easy way out. How one approaches death leaves an impression on one's life instead. The final poem testifies to a courageous preparation: "Jag ska ha promenadskor. / Med rågummisula. / Jag tror att det här är strapatsrikt." ('I'll be wearing walking shoes. / With rubber soles. / I think this is a great adventure.')

The language in these new poems is far more polished than those of their predecessors. Even so, violent shifts of mood and imagery on a collision course still abound. Yet there is a slower and more gradiose rhythm to these poems which often makes them very beautiful: "Jag bygger ett hem med väggar av vatten. Jag bygger ett pariserhjul. / .../ Jag stickar en blå tröja som älskar mig / ..." ('I'm building a home with walls of water. / I'm building a Ferris wheel. / ... / I'm knitting a blue jumper which will love me / ...')

Kristina Lugn's poetry has often been described as 'accessible', therefore well-loved and widely read. It is certainly true that her metaphors are often very close to hand, they are deeply rooted in the home. Venetian blinds, bedroom windows, fireplaces - many of her poems include such household details.

This does not however mean that her poems are cosy. Kristina Lugn shows us just how easily accessible we are; not even at home, curled up in the corner of the sofa, can we hide away. And if our needs are fulfilled with all-round cumfiness, they will return straight away - this time highly volatile.

No. People read Kristina Lugn's poetry because it is timely.