Damascus, Atlantis: Selected Poems

by Marie Silkeberg, Kelsi Vanada (Translator)

Overview

Epic poems drawn from Swedish writer Marie Silkeberg's most recent books are matched with stills from her poetry films, putting word and image in dialogue to explore ruins, cityscapes, the echoes of history, all into the depth of language's power.

Marie Silkeberg has been a major voice in Swedish poetry since the early 1990s. In these poems, drawn from her books Till Damaskus and Atlantis, translated by Kelsi Vanada, she tackles some of the most wrenching events of recent decades--globalization, the escalating war in Syria, and its ongoing aftermath and consequences. The speaker of these poems lives in a reality informed by these events and by an older European history. Taking the standpoint of listener and observer forced to confront the horrors in present tense, the poems question how we share the pain of others, and how the meeting between different experiences of trauma influences language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781949597127
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	12/10/2024
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	180

About the Author

Marie Silkeberg is a poet, translator filmmaker living in Stockholm. She has published eight collections of poetry, including 23:23, Material, and, with Ghayath Almadhoun, Till Damaskus and Atlantis. She has translated Inger Christensen, Susan Howe, Patti Smith, Rosemarie Waldrop, and Claudia Rankine into Swedish. Together with different composers, filmmakers and poets she has authored text and sound compositions and poetry films that have been screened all over the world.

Table of Contents

from Seventh Gate | The Wave 1

from The Cities 9

Saint-Ouen | Stalingrad 17

Hands 35

Abu Dhabi | Rub' al Khali 45

from Seen Thus | the City is a Double Oblivion 59

De Wilde See | Léopoldville 71

Snow Revolution 83

Bárðarbunga 93

Snow 107

Cape Point 117

"Desire is always a question": Translating Marie Silkeberg's Poetry 159

Marie Silkeberg's Micro-Universes 163

Editorial Reviews

As she moves from colonial amnesia to a fierce indictment of colonial rule, Silkeberg shows us what it means to inhabit today’s globalized world.”
  —-Poetry

From the Publisher