FASASKIPTI
Ég elska börnin mín og börnin sem börnin mín
Elska og börnin sem elska börnin mín.
Þau keyra kuldaskó í gegnum ísinn þegar
Tjörnina hefur lagt. Þau elska að beita afli.
Brjóta flísar úr ísingunni og halda þeim upp að
Andlitinu. Ég sé þau út um gluggann, saltsleikt
Auga hússins. Þau sjá mig gegnum tært gler.
Ljósgul skíma og svo dimmir. Þannig er tíminn
Skorinn í sneiðar, hvítar og svartar, skiptingin
Ekki bróðurleg frekar en á öðrum gæðum.
Frostið herðir á aðgreiningunni milli heima
Og breytir lygum í sannindi. Gerir göngubrú úr
Svokölluðu yfirborði vatnsins. Ef falskir botnar fela
Eitur eða fjársjóði, hvað felur þá falskt yfirborð?
Börnin en ekki ég treysta gljúpri himnunni
Yfir handanheiminum þar sem andardrátturinn
Rennur í öfuga átt. Enda er stutt síðan þau komu
Í gegn, önduðu hringöndun meðan þau drukku,
Fljótandi fæði úr sykurbrjósti. Þau bíta í rendurnar
Bryðja glerbrjóstsykur, stolt af styrk sínum.
Í barnatennur vantar taugarnar fyrir tannkul.
Það blómstrar ætiþistill í eldhúsglugganum.
Enginn elskar veturinn eins og börnin mín.
BABÚSKUR
Nýjustu rannsóknir í heimsfræði
á vegum stofnunarinnar sem ég
veiti forstöðu
leiða í ljós
að tíminn hafi byrjað
árið 1981
og aftur þrjátíu árum síðar
Miklahvell
man ég vel
mýþískan tíma
þegar risar gengu
og gulur broddur rann
Löngu áður en risaeðlur
röðuðu sér í hillur
flugu frumefni
um blóðrás
okkar beggja
óljós form
fylltu augu þín
Þú varst munnur
seinna minni
Móðir þín
utan heims
og utan um
VINDVERA
Þá læri ég að rata um húsið
brynni draumkonunni
og geri gull úr drullu
eins og mér er uppálagt
vef saman efa við örvæntingu
flétta rangsælis
eins og munkur
sem hefur misst trúna
en ekki augun eða hendurnar
eins og vinkona mín sagði
daginn sem hárið losnaði af höfðinu á henni
og féll á milli gólffjalanna
ég bíð vonlaus í búk
sem verpir ekki eggjum
heldur fæðir með sprengingu
og flóði frjórra vökva
neyðist til að rúmast á þessum beinum
þessum þéttu þungu beinum
holdið fer krókaleiðir
og syngur á siglingunni
en andinn ferðast á jöfnum hraða
í loftlínu
eftir sólarhring lendir hann
með gyllt stél
finnur mig í fjörunni, sólbakað grjót
og hneggjar
hneggjar og hlær
Þrjú ljóð
Thórdís Helgadóttir
Listen to "Phase Shift" read in the original Icelandic by the author:
On “Phase Shift” and “Babushkas”
A few years back, I was asked to translate an anthology of twenty-five of the best poems to be published in Iceland that year. The file of poems I received contained no names, but there was one poem whose author I would have bet money on being able to correctly guess: Thórdís Helgadóttir. (I would have won that bet.)
All authors have a personal style, a battery of words and phrasings that sing to them and pepper their work, a point of view that reveals itself across their writings. This is as true for Thórdís as it is for anyone else, but perhaps more acutely, and enigmatically so. Her authorial voice is superlative in its confident spareness, its alternately fractured and flowing rhythms, its lyrical repetitions and tongue-teasing alliteration, its imagery that is somehow so familiar as to feel entirely foreign and new again. Fleeting moments in Thórdís’s writing become whole worlds, and I often find that I’m having a powerful intuitive response to certain images well before I’ve taken in the full panorama.
Cultivating an author’s voice in English is a big part of what I focus on in my translations and I find that generally speaking, I achieve this by layering aspects of my voice on top of the writer’s, as though icing a cake. This process feels different for me with Thórdís, more like dipping lady fingers in coffee when making a tiramisu. It’s as though I’m steeping myself in her words and phrasings until I’m fully saturated and enveloped by her poetry.
On “Windbeast”
At the time I translated Windbeast in July 2021, I was one month shy of my four-year anniversary of moving to Iceland, and I had so many lessons left to learn about Icelandic language and culture. 2020 was also the year before the publication of Thordís’s first full-length collection of poetry, Tanntaka (Teething), a moment of major change for an Icelandic poet coming into her season.
It’s strange to revisit a translation after so many years—peering backwards from 2024. Four years of improving my language skills, four years of illness and love and learning and reading. Four years in Iceland.
Even now, the sound of sense that rivers through this text dazzles me. It has staying power: Sound is a constant thread, tying one stanza to the next, a ribbon running through the poem’s many rooms like a woman ambulating in the night. Hair slipping, falling, hands weaving: These are the motions of Windbeast’s fluid, folkloric world. The poem moves freely in the manner of unconscious writing, “pleating” its associations “counterclockwise” like a monk in quiet meditation.
Seeing this text from the distance of years hasn’t made a vast difference in how I would approach it—maybe a few tweaks here and there—much of which I attribute to my work with the poet. And I do not want to change it, in any case: What is a translator if not a conservator? This poem is a capsule of my personal history as much as it is a preserved moment in the “pocket-universe” of the poet’s timeline and trajectory.
I am proud to be a part of this poem’s long, elongating lifespan.
—Meg Matich
A few years back, I was asked to translate an anthology of twenty-five of the best poems to be published in Iceland that year. The file of poems I received contained no names, but there was one poem whose author I would have bet money on being able to correctly guess: Thórdís Helgadóttir. (I would have won that bet.)
All authors have a personal style, a battery of words and phrasings that sing to them and pepper their work, a point of view that reveals itself across their writings. This is as true for Thórdís as it is for anyone else, but perhaps more acutely, and enigmatically so. Her authorial voice is superlative in its confident spareness, its alternately fractured and flowing rhythms, its lyrical repetitions and tongue-teasing alliteration, its imagery that is somehow so familiar as to feel entirely foreign and new again. Fleeting moments in Thórdís’s writing become whole worlds, and I often find that I’m having a powerful intuitive response to certain images well before I’ve taken in the full panorama.
Cultivating an author’s voice in English is a big part of what I focus on in my translations and I find that generally speaking, I achieve this by layering aspects of my voice on top of the writer’s, as though icing a cake. This process feels different for me with Thórdís, more like dipping lady fingers in coffee when making a tiramisu. It’s as though I’m steeping myself in her words and phrasings until I’m fully saturated and enveloped by her poetry.
—Larissa Kyzer
On “Windbeast”
At the time I translated Windbeast in July 2021, I was one month shy of my four-year anniversary of moving to Iceland, and I had so many lessons left to learn about Icelandic language and culture. 2020 was also the year before the publication of Thordís’s first full-length collection of poetry, Tanntaka (Teething), a moment of major change for an Icelandic poet coming into her season.
It’s strange to revisit a translation after so many years—peering backwards from 2024. Four years of improving my language skills, four years of illness and love and learning and reading. Four years in Iceland.
Even now, the sound of sense that rivers through this text dazzles me. It has staying power: Sound is a constant thread, tying one stanza to the next, a ribbon running through the poem’s many rooms like a woman ambulating in the night. Hair slipping, falling, hands weaving: These are the motions of Windbeast’s fluid, folkloric world. The poem moves freely in the manner of unconscious writing, “pleating” its associations “counterclockwise” like a monk in quiet meditation.
Seeing this text from the distance of years hasn’t made a vast difference in how I would approach it—maybe a few tweaks here and there—much of which I attribute to my work with the poet. And I do not want to change it, in any case: What is a translator if not a conservator? This poem is a capsule of my personal history as much as it is a preserved moment in the “pocket-universe” of the poet’s timeline and trajectory.
I am proud to be a part of this poem’s long, elongating lifespan.
—Meg Matich
Thórdís Helgadóttir is an Icelandic writer. Her debut short story collection Keisaramörgæsir (Emperor Penguins; Bjartur, 2018) received high critical acclaim, as did her debut poetry collection Tanntaka (Teething; Forlagið, 2021), which earned numerous nominations and awards. Her theatrical work has been staged at the City Theatre of Reykjavík, where she was the 2019–2020 Resident Playwright.
Thórdís’s first solo novel Armeló (Armelo; Forlagið, 2023) became a resounding critical and commercial success in Iceland. Previously, Olía (Oil; Forlagið, 2021), a novel written jointly with the writers’ collective Svikaskáld (Impostor Poets), earned a nomination for the Icelandic Literary Prize, the highest honour in Icelandic literature. The collective has also published four books of poetry.
Thórdís is the co-founder and editor of the online literary magazine Stelkur. She holds a BA in philosophy and an MFA in creative writing and teaches creative writing at the University of Iceland Institute of Continuing Education.
Larissa Kyzer is a writer and Icelandic to English literary translator. Her translation of Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s A Fist or a Heart (AmazonCrossing, 2019) won the American Scandinavian Foundation’s 2019 translation prize. That same year, she was one of Princeton University’s Translators in Residence. In 2021, she guest edited “On the Periphery,” a spotlight on new Icelandic writing for Words Without Borders, which included her translation of Thórdís Helgadóttir’s short story “The Sea Gives Us Children.” Larissa’s recent full-length translations include Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir’s The Fires (AmazonCrossing, 2023) and Fríða Ísberg’s The Mark (Faber/Text, 2024). She has received grant funding and support from the European Union Prize for Literature, the Fulbright Commission, the Icelandic Ministry of Education and Culture, the Icelandic Literature Center, and Finland’s Kone Foundation. She is an at-large board member of the American Literary Translators Association and runs the virtual Women+ in Translation reading series Jill! For more, visit her website.
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.
