To a poet discuss the state of poetry is a difficult mission. On the one hand, I have expressed myself as individual practitioners, on the other hand, I represent the group of contemporary Swedish poets who in our lyrical förstockning are in the process to stifle ourselves, according to critics, the Victor Ore and Rebekah Kärde. My name has certainly been mentioned in positive terms in the debate. Highlighted and hardened on one and the same time, is the poem I write.
The ongoing discussion is, just as Alice Kassius Eggers notes in Aftonbladet, the most of all about the criticism, rather than about the poetry itself. But the effect is not to be mistaken: her poetry has also come into focus. This is reflected not least by people in my vicinity, who never before would have arrived at the idea, wondering what I think about the Swedish samtidspoesin?
And I say there isn’t really much to complain about.
a writer who writes in this language, the last few years I read and heard a poem that has been inspiring, crazy, bindgalen, beautiful, annoying, good, outstanding – a number of additional adjectives are possible. But as true as it is that the amounts of good Swedish poem, I must as practitioners recognise that the readership is narrow.
the Reasons for that poetry does not receive the central role that it did in, for example, the early 1900’s, I am the wrong person to investigate. But of one thing I am convinced: the reader who is accustomed to poets such as Edith Södergran, Harry Martinson or Karin Boye and looking for counterparts in the Swedish lyrikutgivningen 2019 has not much to find.
Through the years, in pace with modernity and modernism, the world wars, the aesthetic stiluppror and the reversal of the trend, språkfilosofiska nyordningar, increased globalization, and postmodernity, has poetry as well as art in general had extremely many more needs to meet. The quantity of data increases. The confusion is on the rise. The greenhouse the earth is set on fire.
To write a clear and beautiful poem about love or death is not synonymous with the expectation of tearing down the applause of the samtidspoetiska the audience. You are expected to screw into it. Tone down the claims. Perhaps a bit of irony, or sarcasm. Or gravallvarlighet, but in fragments. Absolutely not communicate feelings or thoughts.
of Course, I wish that the poem could move mountains. Blast holes in the byråkrateuropeiska torftigheten.
claimed Göran Greider to samtidspoeterna have themselves to blame that no one reads them. They try never to be understood. The claim has annoyed me since then. At the same time, it speaks strongly to my historic I. The fifteen years ago, began to make his voyage of discovery in the poetry and bought tickets to Swedish poesifestivaler. I sat there in the lyriksalongerna while poet after poet stepped up and made Vague And Uncaring Poem That Is About Everything And Nothing. I felt like fools. What do they want? And so it is liberating the yearning in the bottom of a itself, when any poet, got up on stage and seriously communicated an idea, a feeling, an experience.
of Course, I wish that the poem could move mountains. Blast holes in the byråkrateuropeiska torftigheten. But how would it go to? Göran Greider is wrong. The poem – and the poet – does not carry the sole responsibility. Poem, accomplishes nothing by itself. Poetry opens up when the reader makes himself receptive.
to include the fragile miracle of a single lönnblad, I can’t place the responsibility with the blade. The blade is there. The sensation mobilised and housed in the person who encounters it.
a little bit. In order to attract people to even make the effort, need the poem like something, send ideas, images, thoughts, motives, which owns about not hooks so at least the small polyps or sugfötter. In order to appreciate the poetry assumes a willing recipient. But poetry must also be willing to be received.
A difficult lyrical quality is all about sugfötterna: the means by which succeed the poet make the poem irresistible? It’s not necessarily about the level of comprehensibility, but to borrow a phrase from the poet Gunnar Björling: it’s about seizing. To maintain, förfära, seduce, disgust, gyckla, enthuse, put in a trance or dancing. Anything, but anything! The poem deserves to reach out and – with Rebekah Kärdes words – upsetting the world. Half the work lies with the reader/listener. The rest of the responsibility I bear as a poet.
Jonas Gren is a poet. Gave the the latest out the collection ”Dälden, where the bloom” (10Tal Bok, 2018)
Read more: An interview with planetlyrikern Jonas Gren
Read more: really, the idea that poetry has stagnated so laughable?
