Description
Poetry. Translated from the Danish by Mark Kline. For some time now Mette Moestrup, one of Scandinavia's most important contemporary writers, has been writing an edgy poetry about the body, about being a mother and a lover in Denmark. She is renowned for love verse as uninhibited as it is feminist, and her provocative, mischievous, sexy poetry also happens to be headily intellectual and full of references to anything and everything, from Batman to Rilke. Moestrup holds true to form with this wildly interwoven collection full of word play and formal avant-garde experiments, kitchensinkfuls of references, recurring themes of ethnicity and sexuality, war and violence, sustained motifs, mythical female figures on a sensation-seeking TV talk show. But all of this, and much more, with an unease, an edginess, a vulnerability as political controversies and racism repeatedly appear to question what at first seems playful. It is a work that delights then challenges the delight. KINGSIZE is Mette Moestrup's third and most acclaimed book. It won the Danish Montana Literature Prize for innovative writing.
Author Bio
Mette Moestrup was born in 1969 and lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is the author of four books of poetry: Tatoveringer (Tattoos) (1998), Golden Delicious (2002), KINGSIZE (2006), and Dø, løgn, dø (Die, Lie, Die) (2012). In 2009 she published the novel-collage, Jævnet med jorden (Leveled to the Ground). She has also written two books for children, Ti grønne fingre (Ten Green Fingers) (2006) and Hvad siger sneugleungen Ulla? (What does Tula the Baby Snowy Owl say?) (2009). Her work has been translated into Swedish, Finnish, Greenlandic, German, Norwegian, Chinese, and English. Besides writing books, she works with mail art and net art, such as Letterproject M.M., www.afsnitp.dk/galleri/mm/home.html, and the collective, anonymous text, www.kollektivt-anonymt.dk. She has always worked with the performative aspects of reading for an audience and recently has started to collaborate with a musician. They dig weird, organic, computer-manipulated sounds, and beats, and their motto is aggression and fun. They call themselves SHE'S A SHOW. She has an academic background. She studied literature for many years. One highlight was a course by Edward Said at Columbia University. She dropped out of a Ph.D. program in 2001 in order to live as a poet. Theory still means a lot to her, but she uses it very idiosyncratically. She has taught at various writing schools in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. She is currently working at Litterär Gestaltning in Göteborg, Sweden. She likes to work with different people in different contexts. She has participated in many poetry festivals—especially in Norway and Sweden, but also in Germany, Estonia, Island, Finland, and Greenland.
Author City: COPENHAGEN DEN