Wednesday 15 April 2009

Bothnian Wayfarer


Söderströms of Helsinki have published a new collection of poems, Bottniska nätter (Bothnian Nights) by the Finland-Swedish Ostrobothnian poet Gösta Ågren (b. 1936), his twenty-eighth in sequence.

At some point I’ll hope to present one or two of the poems in translation.

My English versions of Gösta Ågren's autobiographical trilogy are still available online.

4 comments:

Eric Dickens said...

Yes, David, do post a few of his poems here. He is perhaps the most important Ostrobothnian poet that still lives in the region. I've always preferred his work to that of Claes Andersson with whom he shares political affiliations. It's a pity that your translations are not available in print, but the online versions certainly make up for it.

I'm looking forward to seeing Bottniska nätter.

David McDuff said...

I'll get round to it eventually... The great thing about Gösta is that he generally keeps his politics out of his poetry.

By the way, I think it's possible to obtain copies of my translation of his selected poems, A Valley in the Midst of Violence (Bloodaxe) via Amazon.

But who needs print editions, anyway? :-)

Michael Peverett said...

Odd that GA's poems aren't in print in English, I've several times noticed the aphorisms in popular anthologies or being passed around among people who may not otherwise be all that keen on poetry. However, I'm a C Andersson fan too...

David McDuff said...

>>Odd that GA's poems aren't in print in English<<

I think you would need to ask Bloodaxe about it...