Swedish Poetry 1
of the twenty-first century poet Malte Persson, w
ho relishes getting up to new tricks in his poetry collections while still keeping one foot firmly placed in the history of literature. But there are also older Swedish poets who walk the tightrope between the past and a very up to date present in similar fashion: Stig Larsson, who explores history through perceptive contemporary poems, and Lars Gustafsson, who is entrenched just as firmly in the traditional as in the modern. Larsson and Gustafsson have also retained their status as powerful sources of inspiration for subsequent generations of poets. New Political Poetry The revival enjoyed by political poetry in Sweden is primarily a feature of recent years. Where previously a focus on ideologies and statecraft was prominent, during the 2010s a number of important works of ecocriticism have been produced, including the writings of Åsa Maria Kraft. Political poetry has also been written by Aase Berg, who is updating Sonja Åkeson’s combative feminism. Furthermore Athena Farrokhzad is writing about immigration and assimilation in a creative and inventive way. Johan Jönson represents the most radical renewal of conventionally written Swedish poetry. His work has ties to both the concrete poetry championed in the 1960s and to the working-class literature of an earlier time. It uses new means to achieve this and does so with a savagery never before witnessed within the bookends of Swedish poetry. For a more detailed account of the impact of these events on contemporary Swedish poetry, see the essay by Johannes Göransson on page 36. 43 SWEDISH POETRY