Waitress in Fall

About this book

For over three decades Kristn marsdttirs poetry has thrived in the vanguard of Icelandic literature. Waitress in Fall offers anglophone readers the first substantial selection of her poems in translation. Spanning thirty years and seven collections from her first to her latest this is a wide-reaching introduction to a vital voice of contemporary European poetry. Kristns work resists the sweet the neat or the certain. Her poems delight in the lush mess of actual life in its hands and fingers lemons and clocks socks soldiers snow mothers knives nightstands sweat and crockery. If the domestic is at the heart of the work it is a domesticity tinged with threat. Something clear and ominous is taking shape between the lines. Images of placid mid-century housewifery confront a wildness pulsing below the surface a womanhood at once natural and supernatural of evening dresses woven from twigs necklaces strung with worms and socks knitted from saliva. These are surreal unsettling landscapes in which children lap milk from trees and car tires are soft as skin. But Kristns poems are also full of laughter sex and love. They accept vulnerability as a condition of intimacy. Erupting wherever thirst is ignited they are not afraid to strike to rage recognising a right a responsibility to risk the necessary word to wound the language.