Poetry. Translated from the Swedish by Johannes Göransson. In this, her first single-volume collection to be published in English, Aase Berg works a wicked necromancy in her poems. Filling each page with fluids and viscera she plunges into the palpable, pulsating center of our psyche—pulling up fistfuls of nightmares at once strange and familiar. To read this book is to glimpse the ecstasy you always suspected lay at the heart of every rapturous horror. WITH DEER [Hos rådjur] was Berg's first full-length book of poetry, originally published in Sweden in 1996. Since then she has published four more books in her native language, exploring the divine terror throbbing beneath the surface of a naturalistic and barely human world.
"Oh, you have taken it too far, Aase Berg, on this field trip to dismember an apocalyptic body that is self-bomb, culture-bomb; you are scratching at the interior of the bomb that has no exterior. Amusedly, bombastically, terrifyingly you scratch. Johannes Görannson's translation is lush and boldly guttural and the two of you have my intestines by a leash. 'One by one you turned my faces up / toward the sun's surface / and drank them like deer water.'"—Cathy Wagner
Author Hometown: Stockholm SWE
About the author: Aase Berg (born 1967) is a Swedish poet and critic. She was among the founding members of the Stockholm Surrealist Group in 1986 and published an early book on their publishing company Surrealistförlaget in 1988. During the late 1990s she has emerged as one of the most prominent young poets in Sweden and has since 1997 had several collections of poetry published by various branches of the Bonnier publishing house, the largest and most prestigious in Sweden. Aase Berg made her debut as a prose writer with a short story in the collection Perversioner: 12 noveller om avvikelser, published on Vertigo, the publishing company of Carl-Michael Edenborg, another member of the Stockholm surrealist group. Berg has also been editor of the literary journal Bonniers Litterära Magasin (commonly known as BLM), has contributed to the journal 90tal, later renamed 00tal, and is a critic for the newspaper Expressen. Her books in English include REMAINLAND: SELECTED POEMS (Action Books, 2005) and WITH DEER (Black Ocean, 2009).
Reviews:
Rebecca Loudon @ Galatea Resurrects
Gabriel Lovatt @ Galatea Resurrects
Jordan Davis @ The Constant Critic
Rick Marlatt @ Coldfront
Nicole Zdeb @ Word For/Word
translator Johannes Göransson interviewed by SJ Fowler @ 3:AM Magazine
