Yallah!
It’s dry here now
and two boys are running
around the house
with water guns
one of them is wearing a red sweater
the other one is wearing a green one
they laugh
and shout
and shoot at each other
and at my window
little rivulets
stream down the pane
The BBC World Service says
there is a flood in New South Wales
in Australia
I can see the nose
of a cow
that’s stuck in
the mud
in a river
swollen with rain
a woman in a kayak
is lying in close
with one hand under the chin of the cow
to stop the big black and white head
from going under
while they’re waiting
for the rescue party
the cows eyes
wild
from fear
the woman’s hand
calming
Once
I tended cows
they were Hebrew
fat
numbering more than seven
Yallah!
I would shout at them
to drive them inside
for milking
I was nineteen years old
and didn’t think about
yallah being Arabic
we also shouted it
when a cow was giving birth
and the calf was stuck
and we’d have to use a hawser
and a tractor
to pull
the unwilling soul
out into the biblical sun
Now they’re soaking wet
outside
the red
and green boys
water drips
from their hair
and runs
down their faces
the guns are empty
and the cow in Australia
has gotten so tired
from staying above water
that she too has to be pulled
to dry land
with a tractor
Cleanup
After waking
I walk to the edge of the world
this morning
the waves
leap like kid goats
from stone to stone
powder gray rocks
at daybreak
decorated
with purple seaweed
and me
a mere speck
obvious
but foolishly
blissful
possessing
only tame thoughts
and pathos
even the clouds
are childish
vitreous and translucent
they float delicate and rosy
over the silvery field
I close my eyes
and let a bluish fragrance
fill me
and when I open my eyes again
brilliant
golden filaments sprout
they branch
from the deep
reaching toward the heavens
silent flames
flickering embers
this is what it must have felt like
to live in
The Romantic Period
and I bend down
and pick up a slimy
plastic bag
out of a green tidal pool
next to me
I stand a while
and let it drip
it’s yellow
and pink
like the sunrise
cold in my hand
as I roll it up
and put it in my pocket
a little later I’m kneeling
not in worship
but crawling on all fours
to pick up blasting wire
the quarry
grows and grows
out on the stony soil
black and yawning
toothless
rattling
its inaudible
frequencies
sandpipers
trip away from the waves
their slantwise heads
like question marks
Genesis
Here is an abridged edition
of my apocryphal writings about
wildflowers
and
wallflowers
and a place in my mind
I call
the good girl’s room
Here neural pathways
lead back to my foremothers
forming a dreamy mesh
and straight to a revelation
of a goat
my odd sister
lodesman and lodestar
at the same time
Here is a mother
who finds herself
at a crossroads
in endless
midlife melancholy
but still refuses
to deny life
or the color
that gives life
meaning
Here doubt
is welcome
here grace
is a matter of course
here are the consequences
of turning away
from all the eyes
upturned toward heaven
Here is the child
who couldn’t understand
but felt it all
at her core
where her soul took shelter
from the word
Here there’s rebellion
and repression
in a jumble
the silent scream
and the pasted-on smile
the untamed
and the timid
all tangled up
with one another
Here is the truth about the fact
that all truths
crumble
and decay
drifting away
dusty and golden on the breeze
Here is time
which clings
to everything
but is so impossible
to cling to
Here is a skin around
muscle
and
sorrow
and
energy
and
euphoria
Here is an I
tapping
and scrolling
through
matters of faith
and science
repeating
apocalyptic
news
about growth
and wild animals
wondering
what else is there to say?
from The Karma Goat
Marjun Syderbø Kjelnæs
translated from the Faroese by Matthew Landrum and Rakul í Gerðinum
Listen to an excerpt of the original Faroese read by the poet:
“I’d have to grow horns,” Marjun Syderbø Kjelnæs told me, describing her inspiration and impetus for the paired books—play and poems—Gentukamarið and Karmageitin and how she became “a little bit of a goat.”
It was our first time meeting and we sat in her classically Scandinavian dining room—all light woods and clean angles—with a view down the hill to old Tórshavn. She told me it was her first time hosting an American and joked that her daughter had recommended she serve me Coke and corn dogs but that there’d been no time to go to the store. We sipped coffee and she related how in 2015 a male Faroese poet of the older generation wrote a scathing roundup of the Faroe Islands’ literature from that year. In one sentence he dismissed the entire contribution of Faroese women as “all that writing from the girls’ room.”
The comment made her determined to write something Faroese and feminine that would “intrude into the old boys’ club.” That’s when she had a dream about a goat, an odd sister that came to her to encourage her to grow her horns so she could take on the establishment and her own complex history. She became the titular Karma Goat, the poet as a mischievous and curious bringer of karma to her insular society.
The poems from The Karma Goat, three of which are published here, explore what it means to be a Faroese woman living a modern life but connected to her lineage through a dreamy mesh of neural pathways [that] lead back to my foremothers. “What is it to be a woman? To be an older woman—to become invisible and accept that you’re in charge and not in charge at all,” Kjelnæs asked as she discussed the life moment captured in the collection. I am grateful, particularly in this context, for my cotranslator Rakul í Gerðinum, whose lived experience, language skill, and patient fielding of my questions were invaluable.
The book explores themes of Faroese femininity in depth, but it is also cut through with other themes—ekphrasis in Chagall’s goat-heavy art, the consumption of international news media in the context of a micronation with little international sway, insomnia and worry, and grappling with faith and religion after a childhood in a fundamentalist context. It’s one of the most dynamic books I’ve worked on as a translator. And it is certainly one that accomplished what it set out to do. Kjelnæs broke down the doors of the Faroese literary establishment and its old boys’ club, garnering a nomination for the 2023 Nordic Prize.
It was our first time meeting and we sat in her classically Scandinavian dining room—all light woods and clean angles—with a view down the hill to old Tórshavn. She told me it was her first time hosting an American and joked that her daughter had recommended she serve me Coke and corn dogs but that there’d been no time to go to the store. We sipped coffee and she related how in 2015 a male Faroese poet of the older generation wrote a scathing roundup of the Faroe Islands’ literature from that year. In one sentence he dismissed the entire contribution of Faroese women as “all that writing from the girls’ room.”
The comment made her determined to write something Faroese and feminine that would “intrude into the old boys’ club.” That’s when she had a dream about a goat, an odd sister that came to her to encourage her to grow her horns so she could take on the establishment and her own complex history. She became the titular Karma Goat, the poet as a mischievous and curious bringer of karma to her insular society.
The poems from The Karma Goat, three of which are published here, explore what it means to be a Faroese woman living a modern life but connected to her lineage through a dreamy mesh of neural pathways [that] lead back to my foremothers. “What is it to be a woman? To be an older woman—to become invisible and accept that you’re in charge and not in charge at all,” Kjelnæs asked as she discussed the life moment captured in the collection. I am grateful, particularly in this context, for my cotranslator Rakul í Gerðinum, whose lived experience, language skill, and patient fielding of my questions were invaluable.
The book explores themes of Faroese femininity in depth, but it is also cut through with other themes—ekphrasis in Chagall’s goat-heavy art, the consumption of international news media in the context of a micronation with little international sway, insomnia and worry, and grappling with faith and religion after a childhood in a fundamentalist context. It’s one of the most dynamic books I’ve worked on as a translator. And it is certainly one that accomplished what it set out to do. Kjelnæs broke down the doors of the Faroese literary establishment and its old boys’ club, garnering a nomination for the 2023 Nordic Prize.
Marjun Syderbø Kjelnæs is a poet, playwright, and prose writer based in Tórshavn on the Faroe Islands. Born in 1974, she has published many different works, including her three collections of poetry Rót Tripp (Road Trip; Sprotin, 2012), Opna (Open; Sprotin, 2016), and Karmageitin (The Karma Goat; Ungu Føroyar, 2022), as well as her two plays Tóm rúm (Empty Spaces; Sprotin, 2014) and Gentukamarið (A Girlhood Room; Ungu Føroyar, 2022). She is a popular author of YA novels on the islands and writes lyrics for the Faroese singer/songwriter Eivør. Her two most recent books were nominated for the 2023 Nordic Prize.
Matthew Landrum is the author of Berlin Poems (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2019). He is an administrator and teacher at a private school for students on the autism spectrum in the Metro Detroit area.
Rakul í Gerðinum is a scholar of Faroese children’s and YA literature. She has cotranslated a range of contemporary Faroese poetry into English, including Rannvá Holm Mortensen’s Sólsmakkur.
