Untitled - Griffin Poetry Prize

No More Now. Even Fear Has Fear. Even Of Itself.

I refuse to be lonely. No longer. It’s enough now.

Language contradicts itself, constantly producing

additions, disclaimers and footnotes. And the body

never gets ready, nails grow out, and hair, in the strangest

places. Here is the mountainside is black with lemons.

At the very moment I rest within my contour a dam

breaks. Maybe there’s a connection. I am someone

who…bounded by skin, is alone. I say it again, as loud

as I can: not another word! Maybe everything is connected.

Several thousand kilometers away you move your hand.

And here everything is instantly flooded.

Per Brask

2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist

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Patrick Friesen

2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist

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Ulrikka S. Gernes

2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist

See Poet Bio

Notes on the poem

We continue to celebrate works in translation with this week’s poem, an excerpt from the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Canadian shortlisted collection, Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments, by Per Brask and Patrick Friesen translated from the Danish written by Ulrikka Gernes.

Of this collection, the judges said, “this collaboration between Danish poet, Ulrikka…

Of this collection, the judges said, “this collaboration between Danish poet, Ulrikka Gernes and Canadian writers, Brask and Friesen, is astonishingly successful, every line at home in its new language. The poems have not stopped being poems. In fact, now that they are speaking through three mouths (one female, two male) they seem to have gathered an extra layer of strangeness which suits their dream-like, mutable, almost anonymous voice.”

Listen to Per Brask, Patrick Friesen, and Ulrikka Gernes read for the Griffin Poetry Prize Award Ceremony here

Poem of the Week

Untitled
Per Brask & Patrick Friesen (translation from the Danish written by Ulrikka S. Gernes)

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