New Swedish Books, spring 2017 1
19 Spring 2017 Jenny Tunedal (b. 1973) Roses Woun
ds Publisher Wahlström & Widstrand info@wwd.se www.wwd.se Rights Wahlström & Widstrand helene.atterling@wwd.se Selected Works Kapitel ett (Wahlström & Widstrand) Poetry Du ska också ha det bra (Eolit 2009) Poetry Mitt krig, sviter (Wahlström & Widstrand 2011) Poetry Literary Prizes Prins Eugens Kulturpris 2005 Gerhard Bonniers lyrikpris 2012 Kallebergerstipendiet 2014 Roses Wounds In one of the poems in Jenny Tunedal’s Roses Wounds, she writes: ‘Can you imagine being someone else or no one/ In your parents’ lover’s or your own eyes’. And perhaps that’s the most difficult thing: imagining yourself being and not being, imagining being a stranger to your own mother. Against a backdrop of voices and figures, Jenny Tunedal writes about a mother disappearing into Alzheimer’s disease and becoming someone else, even to herself. We hear the voices of King Lear and Cordelia, James Joyce, Marguerite Duras, Alois Alzheimer, Auguste Deter, Gertrude Stein, Svetlana Alexievich, Anne Sexton and many others from a literary and intellectual universe that twists around the secrecy of memory, the soul and existence itself. It creates an expanse of pain, sorrow of a peculiar beauty, as though retrieved from some crumbling palace of memory. Photo: Sara MacKey