Sperm-soaked thighs
seagull droppings
a chewed gum on
asphalt
In the dark you exist only
in the vibrations
*
I gift you a little
sugar
when you suckle
my neck
bruising me
you turn
in our bed
crawl under my
duvet
lay your belly on mine
our navels greet
*
earthworms control
their own bodies
raise their blood sugar
altering the freezing point
of their bodily fluid
they’re in weather-whipped ground
up Mount Nónfjall
*
a blushing knotgrass
the base of its stem
generates brown growth nodes
that tumble off and sprout
into new plants.
I want children
I want you here in
the night garden
from The Night Garden
Beinir Bergsson
translated from the Faroese by Marita Thomsen
Listen to an excerpt of the original Faroese read by the poet:
In The Night Garden Beinir Bergsson explores the delicate and fierce intricacies of physical and emotional bonds and the yearning to build a nest out of heather and lichen in North Atlantic heaths, teeming with beetles, moths and earthworms in the eternal dance of dawn and decay.
These are the first poems in print from Beinir’s collection-in-progress and as such they are at the leading edge of Faroese literature. There is a simultaneously liberating and daunting quality to retelling an evolving whole. It offers a sense of freedom to explore without the formal constraints of a fully completed cycle. You fly blind, however, because the author may take the whole in a direction the trailing translator cannot predict and so cannot consider in her work. But who can refuse the alluring prospect that perhaps a turn, a hue, a mood highlighted by the translator’s choice may loop back and inspire the poet in turn?
Though they have yet to come to roost in a completed whole, these poems don’t stand in isolation. They build on the tender cosmos of unabashed desire between men, lyrical reminiscence and longing first introduced by Beinir in his second poetry collection, The Sun Trap, which was published in a bilingual edition by Francis Boutle Publishers in 2024.
The Sun Trap was the first explicit collection of queer poetry written in the language of the Faroe Islands, a society that only recently has come, in its majority, to celebrate LGBTQ lives and rights. Beinir is a trailblazer and The Sun Trap a milestone. As one of the first Faroese women to marry another woman, I am moved by the sheer existence of these poems in my mother tongue. As a translator I have been asked how it feels to have work published in bilingual editions, immediately open to scrutiny and comparison. In working on these texts, I have been reminded that it is a feeling familiar to me and therefore perhaps less challenging; as the odd queer out on a small island, all you can do is stand by yourself.
I have had the joy of performing bilingual readings of poems from both The Night Garden and The Sun Trap with the author. And I have let his tender and playful, yet precise tone guide me in my translations.
These are the first poems in print from Beinir’s collection-in-progress and as such they are at the leading edge of Faroese literature. There is a simultaneously liberating and daunting quality to retelling an evolving whole. It offers a sense of freedom to explore without the formal constraints of a fully completed cycle. You fly blind, however, because the author may take the whole in a direction the trailing translator cannot predict and so cannot consider in her work. But who can refuse the alluring prospect that perhaps a turn, a hue, a mood highlighted by the translator’s choice may loop back and inspire the poet in turn?
Though they have yet to come to roost in a completed whole, these poems don’t stand in isolation. They build on the tender cosmos of unabashed desire between men, lyrical reminiscence and longing first introduced by Beinir in his second poetry collection, The Sun Trap, which was published in a bilingual edition by Francis Boutle Publishers in 2024.
The Sun Trap was the first explicit collection of queer poetry written in the language of the Faroe Islands, a society that only recently has come, in its majority, to celebrate LGBTQ lives and rights. Beinir is a trailblazer and The Sun Trap a milestone. As one of the first Faroese women to marry another woman, I am moved by the sheer existence of these poems in my mother tongue. As a translator I have been asked how it feels to have work published in bilingual editions, immediately open to scrutiny and comparison. In working on these texts, I have been reminded that it is a feeling familiar to me and therefore perhaps less challenging; as the odd queer out on a small island, all you can do is stand by yourself.
I have had the joy of performing bilingual readings of poems from both The Night Garden and The Sun Trap with the author. And I have let his tender and playful, yet precise tone guide me in my translations.
Beinir Bergsson (b. 1997) is a trailblazer in Faroese literature. His forthcoming publication, Náttargarðurin (The Night Garden), is his third poetry collection. It expands on the intimate universe depicted in his second collection, The Suntrap (Sólgarðurin), a sensual celebration of unabashed desire between men juxtaposed with lyrical reminiscence and longing, which was first published by Forlagið Eksil in 2021 and most recently appeared in a bilingual Faroese-English edition by Francis Boutle Publishers in 2024. The Suntrap was the first explicit collection of queer poetry written in the language of the Faroe Islands. Beinir was only thirteen when he took up the pen after his father died. In 2017, at twenty, he launched his debut collection The Little Boy and the Skeleton (Tann lítli drongurin og beinagrindin), published by Sprotin, which examines death through the eyes of a child, a teenager and an adult. The collection earned him the Ebbavirðislønin (EBBA Award) for Best New Writer in 2018. He was nominated for the 2022 Nordic Council Literature Prize for The Suntrap.
Marita Thomsen was born in the Faroes, where the wind roars, and now lives in Keele where it whispers. Her love of languages and stories has crystallized into English translations of Faroese authors, while her work as a conference interpreter satisfies her curiosity and wanderlust. Her long-form translations from Faroese include the bilingual poetry collection Darkening/Myrking by Sissal Kampmann (Francis Boutle Publishers, 2017), the lyrical novel Hinumegin er mars (On the Other Side is March; Francis Boutle Publishers, 2023) by Sólrún Michelsen, and Faroese crime fiction Deydningar dansa á sandi (Dead Men Dancing; Norvik Press, 2023) by Jógvan Isaksen. Shorter fiction translations have been published by Pushkin Press, UK, and Syncretic Press, USA, among others. Marita has also translated Faroese plays that have been staged in London, most recently Lykkenborg (Castle of Joy), written by Búi Dam, which played at the Barbican in 2024.
