A world-class Icelandic poet

Wherever We Go...or don't go

BY KIM SIMONSEN

Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir
Wherever We Go
Mál og Menning. IS

The new poems of Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir may seem modest and straightforward, but they can also be described using terms such as "great art", "modern classics" and "exclusive modernism". Her poetry is subdued and charged with personal experience, couched in condensed and dissociated language, and yet managing to communicate great pathos and melancholy. The rigid form, inspired by Rilke and Celan, counteracts any hint of sentimentality.

This collection of poetry, entitled Hvar sem ég verð (Wherever We Go), is arranged in six sections, each with its own theme. One of the great poems is "My Dove", in which a simple image leads to great but underplayed melancholy: "If only I could dance with you/ you my market dove/ dance with you all day/ dance the sorrow out of you/ you dreamy child (...)". In the early sections the poems deal with time and memory. They are not all equally successful, for instance the poem "Bolungarvík": " (...) on a man being carried home/ to the loft of a fisherman's cottage/ lifeless (...)", in which the style is disturbed by an excessively biographical content.

Experiencing death

The first poem, "För dig" ("For You") is a requiem for Nina Björk Árnadóttir, establishing a generally elegiac basic mood for the collection: "and the birds sing in the tree for you/ you left/ and forgot to say/ goodbye". The images are simple, clear as crystal and complex: "Where the walk begins/ there stands a guardian angel // which has lowered one wing/ and the hand that gives a blessing/ is broken (...)". The poems are not based on a religious philosophy, but should be interpreted as a walk through time and a study of the conditions in life faced by the individual. The style is reminiscent of (or related to) Rilke's "Requiem for a girlfriend", "Duino elegies" and "To the Angel", in which he uses a similar imagery. Haraldsdóttir's poems (like Rilke's) communicate a sense of being godforsaken, a sense of fear and the experience of death from which modern man has isolated himself.

The second and third parts of the collection contain classical seasonal poetry, mixed with a dash of sadness and youthful memory; but the condensed language dissolves all sentimentality: "(...) why here?/ the thread of our lives/ shakes and trembles". Man is at risk, and the Rilke-inspired question is whether we are as weak as our destiny tries to make us?

In the work of Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir we encounter wonderful and occasionally cruel and modern poetry which is free from the human craving for final reconciliation with the world, as in one of the great poems in the collection: "(...) no never/ no never/ in that night/ will even/ the stump of a candle/ be lit (...) Give me a yearning/ a dream/ a happy night/ a burning/ star/ to write a poem about/ when the light is extinguished..."

In the long and fantastic poem that has given the collection its title, "Wherever We Go", all the themes of the collection are condensed and united in the form of paradoxical experience of time, death, memory, loss, poetic creation and poetological considerations. In this collection Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir demonstrates that she is a great, mature poet with a Central European and minimalist voice, daring and managing with poetic distance, self-criticism and precision to write about the major themes in life such as love, the past, and time; thereby showing another road, a contemporary hunt for subtlety and the often suffocating worship of irony. "Wherever We Go" achieves the impossible, and will undoubtedly support the poet a long way into the future.

Kim Simonsen is studying for an MA Research Degree in Nordic Literature, and writes on cultural issues