Swedish Poetry 1
Åsa Nelvin (1951-1981) Gattet (The Narrows, 1981)
Although she had previously had a handful of children’s books and novels published, the posthumously issued Gattet was to be Åsa Nelvin’s only collection of poetry. Kitchensink realism is interwoven with fantasies and dreams in this poetic autobiography. There is a tangible and unusual accuracy about the imagery, which describes in intimate detail the interplay between people who prove inadequate in relation to one another. The child is persecuted by the misdirected concerns of adults. The book has a subtitle “Sånger från barnasinnet” (Songs from the Child Mind) and the poems are written with a child’s demand for authenticity. With this work, Nelvin guaranteed her place as one of the most ground-breaking Swedish writers, and younger poets are still being inspired by her loosening of the boundary between the imaginary and the real. Åsa Nelvin There is an intimate sensuality in the poems–scents, physical details stamped with time and place– as well as an eye for the loving interplay in the wordlessness of these people. The inability to express oneself is not always identical with an unredeemed silence. Ultimately though the poems are shaped, despite the new and insightful humility, into a settling of accounts with a period of alienation. The little girl in the working-class neighbourhood grew too fast, cast out onto an unknown star, essentially exiled and homeless. She ends up packing her bags and urges the reader: “Don’t follow me anymore. There’s no need. I am on my way to you”. From an article “Ett jag i upplösning: Om Carolina Hanssom och Åsa Nelvin". by Cristine Sarrimo i Nordisk kvinnolitteraturhistoria 4 (1997) 35 SWEDISH POETRY