from Map of Comets

Lina Hagelbäck

The 19th century cabin we are renting
is lonely seated aside a pale lake.
There is a wooden jetty, a tarred rowing boat
extra light bulbs, a sun-bleached sunshade
rat traps, an adventure-box.
We have filled the kitchen with food and wine,
maps of pills, Japanese hunting knives.
There is an electric fireplace, a cast-iron stove
seawater from the taps. On a shelf
in the larder are bags of Night Time tea
arranged as a sun-fan on a paper plate.



*

That subdued me the first day.
In the bedroom mauve flowers grow.
Their petals all black
mildly poisonous, housing wasps.
The stems as high as seven feet.
We care for them, nourish them
and give them names. A favourite is
Catch and corrupt. Another is
Giancometti's studio. The starry
viola is so natural that the rest
of the flowers are silent.



*

Today is my birthday
we gather strawberries, whip cream.
I fear surprises
like peaty whisky. You give me
an antique atlas of the love life of outer space.
The night is long enigmatic astronomy, supernovas.
The exhibitionism of planet families, marble galaxies
polyamorous milky ways, comet hunting.
Divorces in the universe, expanding
velvet nebulas, the power of attraction of
the wide dust clouds seen from the jaw.



*

Please replant me.
I am lost among drifts
of pills. The insomnia saturated
by demons. Give me the atlas
it can take me away from here.
We have lost ourselves
in a sealed baroque nightmare.
You say Express me since you can.
Dull reductions, we shiver from the cold
alongside the heaters in the cabin
that does not work, seeing a string of pearls of
comets in the sky. The pearls are supposed to be rare.

translated from the Swedish by Freke Räihä

Read the original in Swedish

Listen to the original read by the poet:

Map of Comets (Kometkarta, Lejd, 2021) is a collection of poems in three suites that form a narrative, a departure from Lina Hagelbäck's first three books—Violencia (Brombergs, 2013), Violencia och hennes far (Violencia and her Father, Brombergs, 2015) and Ambivalencia (Lejd, 2018)—which featured unbridled and dense prose poetry. Although Kometkarta is her most restrained collection of poems, it was heralded as “a sort of poetical survival manual” by critic Björn Kohlström and has been universally praised.

Lina Hagelbäck has a degree in Spanish and literature, and prefers to read Latin American literature—the influence of which is clearly visible in her poetry as a sort of a colloquial enchantment. Hers is a bombastic poetry whose form and style question the very idea of austere, barren and quiet Swedish poetry; it also makes the world alive—with all its magic and meaning and duality—through the concentrated gaze of a poet.

Central images in Lina Hagelbäck’s poetry include the shy viola flower—which is from the Latin root for “violence”, according to the poet and critic Magnus William-Olsson; recurring themes include the relationships between women, child and parent, as well as sanity and insanity. In her writing, words are things more than names, and her astonishing recombination of words into new ones makes for a surprising slippage of meanings—giving rise to new metaphors as they venture into new linguistic territory. One example from this set of poems is her coinage of “sammetsnebulosor,” which I’ve translated as “velvet nebulas”—a nebula consisting of velvet. As if we could touch and wear the fabric of stardust clouds!

Lina Hagelbäck (b. 1971) is an award-winning Swedish poet, critic and journalist; she is the daughter of poet Jösta Hagelbäck and painter Christina Isinger Carlgren. Since her debut in 2013, she has published five other books, one as a collaboration with Finnish-Swedish Ulrika Nielsen. She studied literature at the Universidad de Granada and currently lives in Stockholm with her husband (a musician and historian) and their cats.

Freke Räihä (b. 1978 in Stockholm, with roots in Finland, Karelia and West Bothnia) lives in the small town of Degeberga in the largely rural south-east of Sweden. Räihä receives a paycheck from Österlens folkhögskola, a radical community college where he teaches creative writing, and spends his free time walking by the sea, writing poetry and translating. For years, Räihä has written literary criticism but now focuses on teaching in order to remain hopeful. Räihä has an M.F.A. in creative writing from Lund University and a B.A. in publishing studies (hence the need to find hope). Since 2001, Räihä’s poetry has appeared in journals both prestigious and obscure, and has been translated and anthologized numerous times. His twenty or so full-length books of poetry have been called “beautiful”, “maturing”, “confusing” and “angry” by critics; they continue to be in dialogue with other art and writing. Räihä is currently the holder of a five-year writing grant from the Swedish Author’s Fund.