TWO POEMS FROM JEG VIL VÅKNE TIL VERDEN [I WANT TO WAKE UP TO THE WORLD]
by Karoline Brændjord
translated from Norwegian by Rachel Rankin
Faith
I am the child
of a suicide
The ray that will cast art
over the tragedy
For what if this insanity could leave behind
something gentle and pleasant
I am grace
I grieve and despair
with poise
with soft hair flowing over my shoulders
So that madness will not
consume me as well
So that no-one will see me outside
with hair flying wild on the stillest of days
My muscles ache all through the spring
Aches in my thighs, my bottom, the backs of my legs,
my arms, my stomach
My face is worn down by the wind
by sun, apples and traffic
and the sound of steps on the gravel
It is grief working on me
I must fit into a world that is smaller
Karoline Brændjord was born in 1990 and lives in Oslo. She attended the Academy of Creative Writing in Hordaland, and has also studied North American Studies and Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her critically acclaimed debut poetry collection Jeg vil våkne til verden [I Want to Wake Up to the World] was awarded the 2020 Norwegian Critics’ Prize and the 2020 Tarjei Vesaas First Book Prize, making it the only poetry collection ever to have won both of these prestigious prizes in the same year.
Rachel Rankin is an award-winning poet and translator from Norwegian based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She holds a PhD in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Edinburgh, with her doctoral thesis exploring the question of poetic (un)translatability. She has taught on MA(Hons) Scandinavian Studies and MSc Translation Studies programmes at the University of Edinburgh, and she currently teaches Norwegian language classes at Durham University.