i smell life
i smell life in layers
i smell milk
milk running from eye sockets
endless as the ocean
severed breasts and fingertips
floating on waves of milk
the sun
the shining breast of the universe
the plain face of god
undiscovered milk seas
have appeared on the world map
to the shock of many radars and satellites
previously unknown species of fish are now common
fish with blue eyes
and nipples on their bellies
*
new milkscapes
with breastfeeding trees
milk seeping from nipples
along their trunks
small fetuses latch
like limpets on bedrock
suckling sounds fill the night
the milkdeeps are dangerous tonight
i heard it on the radio
now we have to trawl with wide-gapped nets
to let the nipples pass through unharmed
*
creameries and factories
laboratories with dairy products
in shiny flasks and glass tubes
a highly pressurized system of milkdreams
pipes groan
lactose clouds and children’s cries
computers spitting out whirring milkvalues
mineral stories and fairy tales
refrigerators
filled with milk
cultured in petri dishes
breasts pressed between glass plates
from sobbing mammograms
on the top shelf
compressed mothermilktyranny
in hermetically sealed cans
quivering cups of cream and ice cold jugs of milk
*
breasts swathed in silk
with dangerous cleavage
pale amputated breasts
floating in formaldehyde
in transparent glass jars
breasts tied down on metal tables
blocked milk ducts
and vanished children
mother’s milk
prolactin estrogen progesterone
the child grows in the night
haunted by nipples
nipples in wet dreams
nipples with metal rings
calling out in agony
tame nipples like pet lambs
aggressive nipples on white planets
satellite nipples
broadcasting on your frequency
let the little children come to me
*
breasts in all shapes
round big
small long
inverted nipples
nipples like mountaintops
nipples stitched onto frothy phd theses
royal blue nipples
downy scared breasts
sleeping breasts like small pancakes
breasts like clenched fists and apples
white brown black
breasts beaten black and blue
dissected stitched breasts
carnival breasts and padded bras
entire breast theme parks with silicone prostheses
sour milk
curdled milk
spoiled milk
the witchmilk of longing
you are the salt in my blood
and the sweetness in my smile
*
milk and sutures
i can see my mother and my grandmothers
my aunts and their children
all their best years on the maternity ward
pushing their children into the world
milk and sutures
ecstatic milkgospels
float between the beds
breasts
how are you
my breasts dressed in windblown grass
the greening of our heartbeats
we lie nipple to nipple
my dear
greening and electric
lie close to me tonight
from Spring Milk
Rannvá Holm Mortensen
translated from the Faroese by Matthew Landrum and Rakul í Gerðinum
Listen to an excerpt of the original Faroese read by the poet:
Rannvá Holm Mortensen’s art studio is crammed with supplies and half-finished creations. On my last visit, drying linocuts hung next to a typecase full of tiny plaster heads secured behind chicken wire, rough model boats, a painting of a fetus in utero, and ominous spikes projecting from a matte black surface. My eye moved from art object to art object, wondering and unable to settle.
Mortensen’s multi-media virtuosity—encompassing sculpture, print, paint, sketch, and found materials—is a product of the relentless vision she pursues through mediums. This vision led her to the page in her 2018 debut book Sólsmakkur, which began as a hybrid text and art installation for a gallery. This collection and the follow-up Vármjólk are as much art objects as text. Interwoven with linocut, woodcut, and mixed media collage, both texts—book-length poems—are meant to be experienced visually as much as textually.
Reading Mortensen without accompanying art is still a deeply visual experience, so rich is her descriptive language, which she piles up on the page like layers of gesso and oil paint. To read or translate her work—and what is translation but a deep act of reading?—is to enter her vision. In this excerpt from Vármjólk, she paints with science fiction strangeness a world transmogrified by motherhood. “Milk [seeps] from nipples of breastfeeding trees.” Fish with “nipples on their bellies” swim through “new milk seas.” The violence of the capitalist industrial food system is wrought as laboratories and factories turn motherhood into a commodity and “breasts [are] tied down on metal tables.” Alongside the strangeness and violence, there is a deep tenderness to Mortensen’s work. In the swath and sweep of all that motherhood encompasses, the narrator finds a kinship with her ancestors in breastfeeding. She embraces all shapes of breasts and bodies with all their scars and stretch marks.
After a bilingual reading with Rannvá at a Tórshavn basement bar, I spoke with a younger Faroese poet who told me how strange it was to hear me read this work on motherhood. We laughed, and then she continued that it was also interesting to hear Rannvá read. To her, Mortensen’s strong Suðuroy accent sounded masculine and forceful. I can’t speak to the former but agree with the forceful quality of her speech. I can still feel the rhythms of that urgent, at times almost strident, voice intoning the Faroese of Vármjólk, the artistic vision flowing through the very sounds of her words.
Mortensen’s multi-media virtuosity—encompassing sculpture, print, paint, sketch, and found materials—is a product of the relentless vision she pursues through mediums. This vision led her to the page in her 2018 debut book Sólsmakkur, which began as a hybrid text and art installation for a gallery. This collection and the follow-up Vármjólk are as much art objects as text. Interwoven with linocut, woodcut, and mixed media collage, both texts—book-length poems—are meant to be experienced visually as much as textually.
Reading Mortensen without accompanying art is still a deeply visual experience, so rich is her descriptive language, which she piles up on the page like layers of gesso and oil paint. To read or translate her work—and what is translation but a deep act of reading?—is to enter her vision. In this excerpt from Vármjólk, she paints with science fiction strangeness a world transmogrified by motherhood. “Milk [seeps] from nipples of breastfeeding trees.” Fish with “nipples on their bellies” swim through “new milk seas.” The violence of the capitalist industrial food system is wrought as laboratories and factories turn motherhood into a commodity and “breasts [are] tied down on metal tables.” Alongside the strangeness and violence, there is a deep tenderness to Mortensen’s work. In the swath and sweep of all that motherhood encompasses, the narrator finds a kinship with her ancestors in breastfeeding. She embraces all shapes of breasts and bodies with all their scars and stretch marks.
After a bilingual reading with Rannvá at a Tórshavn basement bar, I spoke with a younger Faroese poet who told me how strange it was to hear me read this work on motherhood. We laughed, and then she continued that it was also interesting to hear Rannvá read. To her, Mortensen’s strong Suðuroy accent sounded masculine and forceful. I can’t speak to the former but agree with the forceful quality of her speech. I can still feel the rhythms of that urgent, at times almost strident, voice intoning the Faroese of Vármjólk, the artistic vision flowing through the very sounds of her words.
Rannvá Holm Mortensen was born in 1950. A career visual artist, she made her Faroese literary debut with the poetry collection Sólsmakkur (Sprotin, 2018), published in English as as Suntaste (International Polar Institute Press, 2023). The book was nominated for that year’s M.A. Jacobsen’s Literature Award. Her second collection Vármjólk (Spring Milk; Sprotin), was published in 2022. Both book-length poems explore themes of motherhood and ekphrasis.
Matthew Landrum is the author of Berlin Poems (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2019). He is an administrator and teacher at a private school for students on the autism spectrum in the Metro Detroit area.
Rakul í Gerðinum is a scholar of Faroese children’s and YA literature. She has cotranslated a range of contemporary Faroese poetry into English, including Rannvá Holm Mortensen’s Sólsmakkur.
