Hugarlandið
Nú eru laufin
vinrauð
eins og plómur.
Og himinninn
gómfyllubleikur.
Ytri veröld,
ég drekk þig.
Ég veiti þér
eins og fljóti.
Yfir skælþurra akra
hugarlandsins.
Hunang
Stjörnfræði Ursins: Appendix
Ímyndið ykkur
að jörðinni
sé sökkt
í hunang.
Við snúning
jarðar dregst
hunangið til.
Sama gerist
með tímann
og rúmið,
í alheimi
Einsteins.
Skógfræði
Ég veit það
um japönsku dvergtrén
að þau vaxa
af sýktum fræjum
annarra trjáa.
Að þau rekja
rætur
til heilbrigðra
skóga.
Líkt og trosnað
rótarkerfi
hugar mins
sem er afsprengi
fjórri
og gildari
þanka.
– Rótarflækjur
hugar
sem raunar gengur ekki
allkostar
heill
til skógar.
af Tími kaldra mána
Magnús Sigurðsson
Listen to the poems read in the original Icelandic by the author:
In his poetry, Sigurðsson tends to practice the "bonier music of monosyllables," stripping his language bare of all superfluous ornamentation. At the same time, such self-imposed linguistic limitations are transcended through intricate wordplay and attention to minor details in the original language, opening up new ways to appreciate and experience the simplest of words.
In translating these poems, I found myself in a monk's cell, faced with the "echoing silence" peculiar to focused practice. As I dove deeper into the text, I formulated "solutions" in English that seemed overly simplistic and devoid of harmony (sound/sense). Sigurðsson's poetry is comprised of the sounds of whispers, a contrast to my tendency, as a poet, toward crescendo and cacophony. Finding the poems in English has meant not compromise but balance. In order to inhabit this new, third, dissonant space between languages, I have taken a less polar view of translation. Icelandic, as a language of poetry, has remarkable flexibility (something like the love child of German's imaginative verbiage and Russian grammar). These poems don't exist in English, Icelandic—either or both. They exist in a third realm, the hyperborean land of Thule, the space wherein writing recalibrates thought by opening up language to new structures and possibilities of meaning.
In translating these poems, I found myself in a monk's cell, faced with the "echoing silence" peculiar to focused practice. As I dove deeper into the text, I formulated "solutions" in English that seemed overly simplistic and devoid of harmony (sound/sense). Sigurðsson's poetry is comprised of the sounds of whispers, a contrast to my tendency, as a poet, toward crescendo and cacophony. Finding the poems in English has meant not compromise but balance. In order to inhabit this new, third, dissonant space between languages, I have taken a less polar view of translation. Icelandic, as a language of poetry, has remarkable flexibility (something like the love child of German's imaginative verbiage and Russian grammar). These poems don't exist in English, Icelandic—either or both. They exist in a third realm, the hyperborean land of Thule, the space wherein writing recalibrates thought by opening up language to new structures and possibilities of meaning.
Magnús Sigurðsson (b. 1984) is an Icelandic poet and translator. His debut was a translation of Ezra Pound's The Pisan Cantos into Icelandic, published by the University of Iceland Press (2007). The translation was awarded the Student Service Scholarship and the Landsbanki Bank Stipend. Sigurðsson's first book of poems, Fiðrildi, mynta og spörfuglar Lesbíu (2008), received the Tómas Guðmundsson Poetry Prize. In 2013, Sigurðsson received the prestigious Jón úr Vör Poetry Prize for the poem, "Tunglsljós," which later appeared in Sigurðsson's third book, Tími kaldra mána (2013). Sigurðsson's translations include a collection of poems by the Norwegian Tor Ulven, Steingerð vængjapör (2012), and a Spanish translation from the Icelandic, together with Laía Argüelles Folch, of Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir's seminal book of poems, La cabeza de la mujer (2011). Forthcoming is Sigurðsson's selection of poems by Adelaide Crapsey, the unheralded pioneer of modern verse in America. Most recently, Sigurðsson released a fourth book of poems, Krummafótur.
Meg Matich is a poet and translator of Icelandic, German, and Danish who earned her MFA from Columbia University. Her translations have received praise from outlets like The New York Times, Oprah, Electric Lit, and Vulture. She is the translator of six works, including Magnús Sigurðsson’s Cold Moons (Phoneme Media, 2017), Thora Hjörleifsdóttir’s Magma (Black Cat, 2021), and Ásta Sigurðardóttir‘s Nothing to be Rescued (Nordisk Books, 2023), and the author of one original poetry collection. She’s received support for her work from the National Endowment for the Arts, Harvard University, PEN America, the Fulbright Commission, the DAAD, and others. Matich is one of few immigrant members of the Writers Union of Iceland, a step she considers quintessential to her life as an immigrant in Iceland. Most recently, she received a National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship, which she will use to co-edit and translate an anthology of Icelandic poet Sjón’s collected works.
