Håkan
Sandell (Sweden)
1962
Born
in Malmö, in the province of Skåne, Håkan Sandell grew up in the most
ethnically diverse city in Scandinavia, and in a region that prides itself on
its close ties to continental Europe. He remembers his grandmother telling him
when he was very young, “We are not Swedish. We belong to a people related to
the Danes and the Germans. We are Skåningar.”
Sandell published his first collection of poetry at the tender age of 19 and went on to became a member of Malmöligan (The Malmö Gang), a group of poets that also included the now very well known film director Lukas Moodysson. In 1995, Sandell and poet friend Clemens Altgård published the long essay/manifest Om Retrogardism (On Retrogardism), in which they argued their case for a broadly based revival of poetry’s traditional resources and techniques, and for the poet’s role as an integral part of society, rather than a spokesperson for a small elite.
Since leaving Malmö more than a decade and
a half ago, Sandell has lived abroad, first in Copenhagen, county Cork,
Ireland, most recently in Oslo. He has also traveled much, in the far north of
Norway, the Faraoe Islands, Iceland, the Orkney islands, Normandy, Scotland,
the Baltic countries and in the valleys of northern Wales. As he puts
it—seriously, but with tongue planted firmly in cheek—“I traveled for almost
ten years in mist-shrouded countries, and read mostly medieval poetry.” In
Norway, Sandell has become an influential member of an artistic community that
calls themselves the Oslo-retrogardists and includes many classical-figurative
painters, poets, musicians and scholars. In addition to his poetry, Sandell
regularly contributes art and poetry criticism as well as essays on historical
subjects to the retrogardist journal Aorta, distributed in Sweden and Norway.
Working closely together with linguists he has translated poetry into Swedish
from Russian, Latvian, French, German, Celtic Irish and classical Greek.
Sandell has developed one of the most
distinctive voices in contemporary Swedish poetry, combining a sober but
unabashed romanticism with an innovative use of traditional tools such as meter
and rhyme, to describe modern urban life. If it is true that his critical
pronouncements have occasionally raised hackles—Om Retrogardism was
hardly his last foray into polemics—he has not been without his champions. Four
of his latest six collections of poetry have been published by Wahlström &
Widstrand, one of Sweden’s most prestigious publishing houses, and his work is
reviewed positively in the major Swedish newspapers. He has received a number
of awards in recent years, including Kallebergerstipendiet from the Swedish
Academy, the Essay Prize from the Organization of Swedish Cultural Journals,
and a writer´s pension for life from the Writers Union and the government of
Sweden.
In 2012, Sandell published a book of his
translations, Jag erkänner att jag levde upp mitt liv.
—Bill
Coyle
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Cathy (Lund: Bakhåll,
1981); Europé (Lund: Bakhåll,1982); En poets blod (Lund:
Bakhåll,1983); Efter sjömännen/Elektrisk måne (Lund: Bakhåll,1984); Flickor
(Stockholm: Gedins Förlag, 1988); Skampåle (Stockholm: Gedins Förlag,
1990); Dikter för analfabeter (Stockholm: Gedins Förlag, 1991); Bestiarium
(privately printed,1992), Fröer och undergång (Stockholm: Gedins
Förlag, 1994); Mikkel Rävs skatt (Simrishamn, Studiekamratens förlag,
1995); Sjungande huvud (Stockholm: Gedins Förlag, 1996); Midnattsfresken
(Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand,1999); Oslo-Passionen (Stockholm:
Wahlström & Widstrand, 2003); Gåvor : valda dikter 1984-2002 (Lund:
ellerströms, 2003); Begynnelser: en barndom i tjugotvå dikter (Tolarp:
Ariel Skrifter, 2004); Skisser till ett århundrade (Stockholm: Wahlström
& Widstrand, 2006); Gyllene Dager (Stockholm: Wahlström &
Widstrand, 2009); Ode till demiurgen (2013)
Twenty
two things not to be trusted
(Hávamál,
85-86)
Twenty
two things not to be trusted:
not
night-old ice, not a winter in Skåne
with
the ice shining and as yet untrodden
to
a confidence inspiring terra firma.
Not
winter in Skåne, not spring in Norway
with
Easter Lilies rising through the snow’s crust;
never,
ever, for Christ’s sake, trust
the
blond from the sticks, fresh off the bus,
the
bloodied thread in the labyrinth,
or
that to every nice girl in a pinch
an
angel comes, outfitted like a demon.
Mistrust
a bit the empire’s balconies,
they
have less of a purchase than the piercing
in
the snake’s tongue; consider: the ice
in
that drink in India will melt, consider, too,
that
the red smiles and eyes as violet-blue
as
the firmament above the Soviet Union
in
one of Mikael Wiehe’s folk rock tunes
won’t
always live up to your expectations.
For
the young, these valuable recommendations;
never
trust the egg laid by the rooster,
or
helpfulness encountered at train stations,
doubt
the dentist’s gold, the wolf’s wool
and
the assurances of a golden future;
that
it’s primarily for your own good
that
you’ve been taken in hand, that you can depend
upon
your being loved by your enemy.
No,
don’t believe for a moment in the imperishable
nature
of the shining ice; in the spread
wings
of Icarus, in a spider’s thread,
in
Christian charity with preconditions,
in
politicians—or the children of politicians
—Translated
from the Swedish by Bill Coyle
(first
published in Words Without Borders)
Poetry
rejoices…
Poetry
rejoices even if the culture dies,
over
the girl with her first electric, how her high,
thin
voice, amplified many times
over
by the loudspeaker, is like a giant’s
in
the green grass of the festival site.
Over
the fragile bells of digitalis, how they hide
the
pistil and the pollen inside.
Rejoices
over rain on the Faroe Islands,
over
rendezvous on the Champs-Elysées at evening.
It
rejoices over Japan, over Korea,
over
arts refined over a thousand years—
the
art of swordsmanship, or of drinking tea.
Rejoices
over the poet, that his heart still beats.
—Translated
from the Swedish by Bill Coyle
(first
published in Poetry)
Your
hair of snakes and flowers
When
I saw one of those men touch your hair,
I
heard for the first time in many a year
the
ancient battle trumpets and I saw
the
banners of an army winding off to war
and
felt that blind power urging me to knock
him
out with one punch, send him tumbling to the floor.
If
nobody had held me back, stopped me,
I
would—God help me—have killed him on the spot,
stomped
out his blood, and spit in it. I’m sorry,
but
you must be aware your winding hair
is
different now, a hornets’ nest, a snakes’ lair!
yes,
like a ball of snakes in a flower basket, dear.
—Translated
from the Swedish by Bill Coyle
(first
published in Poetry)
Requiem
for a Returnee
Czeslaw
Milosz has moved to Krakow,
I
heard from his Swedish translator yesterday,
to
draw in with a deep rattling breath
the
concrete dust by the building scaffolds,
breathed
out again as the muse speaks her last.
And
yet it seems like the scene of his death
should
have remained a California
of
perfected loss, peeled, wide open,
trembling
with desert heat and alienation,
a
well-aged alienation, where not the Beach Boys
but
Chopin, Brahms and Shostakovich
are
played at the cultivated funeral.
Nicely-built
young American female
poets
would have sparkled in the backmost benches
hour-glass
shaped after a lifetime of salads
elegant
too in the most stylish clothing
with
small threads of cotton over their shoulders
in
that self-satisfied self-preoccupation
I
too will adopt any day now
in
order to claim my feminine rights.
Paler,
now, after the warnings about skin cancer
for
over two decades leanly writing
for
no one but themselves or no one
but
their lovely, gold-framed reflections.
So
cool in spite of the heat, and sexy
like
they would be if all of the men had died out
and
they were sexy only for themselves and
for
the shelves in the lesbian bookstore.
Poets,
yes, but more like muses
for
fate, music, and watercolor painting.
Muses
for sports cars, for the streetlights’
mildness
in the dusk, for the blue of the waves
and
of the neon letters high as falcons,
they
all of them seem to be the bearers of a peculiar
bittersweet
inspiration with no one to receive it.
Oh
Sappho, California, sweet music,
why
does Czeslaw Milosz travel to Krakow,
only,
at the birth of his country, to die
like
an utterly ordinary grey old man
when
the long beaches’ mummifying heat
and
a sea as blue as a white cat’s eye
made
a background suited to a Greek god,
youthful
in jeans and drunk on exile
like
Odysseus’ men on milk-sweet lotus?
—Translated
from the Swedish by Bill Coyle
(first
published in PN Review)
Wreath
(Å.A.
1962—1988)
I
bind your funeral wreath, I bind in it
hollow-cheeked
bluebells and after that nothing,
nothing
and all thereafter loose and sparse and bright.
I
put in children’s light bouquets,
grapevine,
smoke of hemp, smoke-rings and smoke
like
rope that does not last the night.
I
call it poor man’s wreath and colorless,
fingernail-pink,
edged with sorrow, yellowed.
I
set in emptiness as well
and
dense and heavy palms and dew belong as well.
I
fill the wreath with milk and mist
that
spill out that spill out onto the grave
and
fasten let fall long black bands.
—Translated
from the Swedish by Bill Coyle
(first
published in PN Review)
The
Pigeons
Healthy
metallic-bright pigeons
born
in the shadows of forests,
weak
despite colorful armor,
silken
scarves billowing brightly.
Delicate
scarlet feet, perfect
feminine
talons, exquisite,
too,
on the male of the species.
Heartbeats
expressed as attire,
throats
curved and slender as serpents’,
sea
colors far up in fir-trees,
seek
me out now after decades.
Hardly-heard
tones to the present,
notes
on diminutive tongues find
greatness
at last in the memory.
Pigeons
in shadowy pine-trees
when
ecstasy shifts into clarity,
amber-red
eyes in the darkness.
Also
where you lay broken,
leftovers
hawks left in clearings,
fluttering
shards of grey opal
weighing
the wind down, the forest
stood
like a temple around you.
Wings
that the waters reflected,
gracing
the air and the sunlight.
Meetings
with you as anathema,
animate
litter, not manifold
greenery
that sings in one’s vision,
chased
along over the sidewalks
leaving
irregular circles
scratched
with your feet’s curled deformities,
give
back an image of purity
rinsed
in grey, grape-tinted clusters
trampled
down there by the corner.
Lines
that recall Leonardo’s
are
quickly worked over by footwear.
Soot-covered
pigeons are reddened;
even
in death they are blatant obscenities.
Pigeons
that foolishly wobbled
in
circuits from dinner to danger;
spat-upon
thread-bare and clownish,
resigned
past the point of timidity,
more
locked than the flame of a candle.
Yet
there is in the pigeon’s blue highness
cast
in the form of the shadow
of
a statue of horse and rider
or,
when its wings are extended,
a
symbol of gossamer visions,
a
hint of its earlier existence
in
a world that was worthwhile and nurturing
when
it lived in the forests’ dominion.
Less
refined minds will continue
to
consider it litter and vermin—
are
pigeons still able to fly, even?
If
you sometime should happen to see them,
sickly
and slovenly, sitting
dour
in the gutters of rooftops,
close
beside eggs that lie rotting,
you
will see plainly a place where
a
lusterless poetry flares now and then
in
memory of all of its losses.
—Translated
from the Swedish by Bill Coyle
(first
published in Ars Interpres)
____
English language translations copyright (c) by Bill Coyle.
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