New Swedish Books. Autumn 2016 1
AUTUMN 2016 an opening a contradictory but practi
cally-minded lifeform an appropriate transformational state a store of really heavy garments to wear in many layers a camera a certain kind of shade of grey and a certain kind of pink a flash that’s not a camera flash one who is watched who is watching a moment of calm an objectionable world behind the knitted cranial hood’s Leif Holmstrand, The Last Day (Albert Bonniers Förlag) Excerpt from the series ‘Trans (close words)’ The Last Day Leif Holmstrand: poet, author and artist, has a long and varied archive behind him as he publishes his poetry collection The Last Day. His texts have always oscillated between extremities, between the provocative and that which is conventionally seen as outwardacting, and a searching that pulls towards melancholy and in which sorrow can be illuminated by sudden flashes of beauty. The Last Day is a book that at once looks back to his previous creation Asami Kannon, and moves towards a state of both sorrow and assurance. The poems are apparently simple, sometimes nudging on the naive, which is more appropriately read as the narrator’s openness and permissiveness towards whatever should come within reach. That spirit of openness is the feeling in which knowledge and experience are won, both as a poet and as a reader. Leif Holmstrand THE LAST DAY Albert Bonniers Förlag Rights: Albert Bonniers Förlag 29