Imaginary Land
The leaves, now
claret
like plums.
And the sky,
palatial pink.
Outerworld,
I drink you.
I channel you
like a river.
Over the barren fields
of the imaginary land.
Honey
Ursin's Astronomy: Appendix
Imagine
the earth
immersed
in honey.
Its rotation
trailing
honey strands.
Likewise
with time
and space,
in Einstein's
universe.
Forestry
I know
Japanese bonsai trees
sprout
from the poisonous seeds
of other trees.
That their roots
spread,
forming healthy
forests.
The frayed
root systems
of my thoughts,
the offspring
of fertile
and sound
ideas.
—Tangled roots,
thoughts,
experiences: these don't
remain altogether
healthy
in the forest.
from Cold Moons
Magnús Sigurðsson
translated from the Icelandic by Meg Matich
Read the original in Icelandic
Listen to the poems read in the original Icelandic by the author:
In his poetry, Sigurðsson tends to practice the "bonier music of monosyllables," stripping his language bare of all superfluous ornamentation. At the same time, such self-imposed linguistic limitations are transcended through intricate wordplay and attention to minor details in the original language, opening up new ways to appreciate and experience the simplest of words.
In translating these poems, I found myself in a monk's cell, faced with the "echoing silence" peculiar to focused practice. As I dove deeper into the text, I formulated "solutions" in English that seemed overly simplistic and devoid of harmony (sound/sense). Sigurðsson's poetry is comprised of the sounds of whispers, a contrast to my tendency, as a poet, toward crescendo and cacophony. Finding the poems in English has meant not compromise but balance. In order to inhabit this new, third, dissonant space between languages, I have taken a less polar view of translation. Icelandic, as a language of poetry, has remarkable flexibility (something like the love child of German's imaginative verbiage and Russian grammar). These poems don't exist in English, Icelandic—either or both. They exist in a third realm, the hyperborean land of Thule, the space wherein writing recalibrates thought by opening up language to new structures and possibilities of meaning.
In translating these poems, I found myself in a monk's cell, faced with the "echoing silence" peculiar to focused practice. As I dove deeper into the text, I formulated "solutions" in English that seemed overly simplistic and devoid of harmony (sound/sense). Sigurðsson's poetry is comprised of the sounds of whispers, a contrast to my tendency, as a poet, toward crescendo and cacophony. Finding the poems in English has meant not compromise but balance. In order to inhabit this new, third, dissonant space between languages, I have taken a less polar view of translation. Icelandic, as a language of poetry, has remarkable flexibility (something like the love child of German's imaginative verbiage and Russian grammar). These poems don't exist in English, Icelandic—either or both. They exist in a third realm, the hyperborean land of Thule, the space wherein writing recalibrates thought by opening up language to new structures and possibilities of meaning.
Magnús Sigurðsson (b. 1984) is an Icelandic poet and translator. His debut was a translation of Ezra Pound's The Pisan Cantos into Icelandic, published by the University of Iceland Press (2007). The translation was awarded the Student Service Scholarship and the Landsbanki Bank Stipend. Sigurðsson's first book of poems, Fiðrildi, mynta og spörfuglar Lesbíu (2008), received the Tómas Guðmundsson Poetry Prize. In 2013, Sigurðsson received the prestigious Jón úr Vör Poetry Prize for the poem, "Tunglsljós," which later appeared in Sigurðsson's third book, Tími kaldra mána (2013). Sigurðsson's translations include a collection of poems by the Norwegian Tor Ulven, Steingerð vængjapör (2012), and a Spanish translation from the Icelandic, together with Laía Argüelles Folch, of Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir's seminal book of poems, La cabeza de la mujer (2011). Forthcoming is Sigurðsson's selection of poems by Adelaide Crapsey, the unheralded pioneer of modern verse in America. Most recently, Sigurðsson released a fourth book of poems, Krummafótur.
Meg Matich is a poet and translator, and a recent recipient of the PEN/Heim Translation grant. Her translations have appeared in Exchanges, Words Without Borders, Absinthe, and other journals. Her first full-length translation collection, Sigurðsson's Cold Moons, from which these poems are excerpted, is forthcoming from Phoneme Media. She was a finalist for the 2015 ALTA fellowship and has received grants and fellowships from Columbia University, the DAAD, and the Banff Centre. She has participated in Festival Neue Literatur, presented work on Icelandic at Barnard's Translation in Transition conference, assisted with Columbia University's Word for Word program, and worked in workshops at the Goethe-Institut/German Book Office. While in residence at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre in 2014, Matich translated the work of Icelandic poet Magnús Sigurðsson.
