Icelandic - English Translations

 

HEROSTORIES

Hetjusögur by Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir. Deep Vellum, Dallas, March 2023

Composed from the memoirs and biographies of 100 Icelandic midwives, poet-historian Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir’s found poems illuminate the dangers and valor of birthwork. Forgoing traditio`nal sagas of androcentric conquest, these poems center the adventures of ljósmæður, “mothers of light.” Tómasdóttir leverages epic elements—dashing mountain treks, rivers forded on horseback, unyielding compassion—to challenge how and by whom stories become legend.


Stormwarning 

Stormviðvörun by Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir Phoneme Media, Los Angeles, 2018

“Feminine decadence is the best and stickiest.”

Stormwarning opens with “Bubbly in the Vulva”, a poem that uses tax jargon to critique inequitiies in gendered work. Spinning sexist condescension into spoonfuls of sugar, the collection traces the tension between economic interests, environmental damage, and morality. We want to be—or at least to be seen as—good. We are at the mercy of the weather, which has no such concept. Destruction is on the horizon: we hope and fear for it. We “get the grills inside.” One way or another, we will be satisfied.

2019 PEN America Literary Award Nominee, Poetry in Translation Winner of the American Scandinavian Foundation's Leif and Inger Sjöberg Award


Black Lava

Fairy Tale

By photographer Susanne Walström, Original text by Hildur Knútsdóttir Berlin: Kerber Verlag, 2018

Swedish photographer Susanne Walström’s richly colored photographs depict the majesty of Icelandic horses and their environment, drawing connections to the historic role of the horse in Norse mythology. Featuring Hildur Knútsdóttir’s evocative prose and K.B. Thors’ English translation.


Spanish - English Translations


Chintungo:

The Story of Someone Else

Chintungo: la historia de alguien más By Soledad Marambio Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2017

A boy-turned-man-turned father, refracted in the poems of his daughter. Through her father’s photos, Marambio traces her family’s movement from mule-drawn trains in rural Chile to VCRs in Pinochet’s Santiago, examining identity, origin, and unknowable history.


Tito

By Marcelo Simonetti  Ian Randle Publishing, Kingston, 2017.

Tito is bewildered by the world of adults, those strange humans who kiss on the lips and never stop working. Anxious about growing up and his mom’s new boyfriend, Tito grounds himself through football and his Los Ángeles Rojos. A novel in the form of Tito’s diary, this laugh out loud coming-of-age story explores masculinity, play, and love.

Commissioned by the Chilean Embassy in Trinidad & Tobago, funded by the Dirección de Asuntos Culturales del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile.