New Swedish Books, autumn 2020 1
New Swedish Books 32 In the Meantime Jenny Högstr
öm’s choice Anna Hallberg is a consistent poet. Since her debut in 2001 with the short and pithy Friction, language, often in its most vocal and concrete form, has been her focus. However, in her new poetry collection In the Meantime, with a cover resembling the electrical enclosure in grey steel so typical of the Swedish urban landscape or perhaps the gravestone of the poet’s dead mother, it sometimes seems as if language isn’t enough. It cannot contain the grief, it cannot contain the loss, it cannot name. Instead movements and objects of everyday life are invoked. A stillness. There is an attempt to cope, to be “open to death”, even though it isn’t possible. Anna Hallberg writes: “I may die I don’t mind / not you // the days are erased up to a point / where time is getting stuck”. In the book’s final section two lines run right across the book from edge to edge. Like a delineation of life, or the dividing-line between the living and the dead. Anna Hallberg Selected works Friktion 2001 Chow chow 2017 Lägesrapport från Aniara – Tre essäer 2019 Selected awards Aftonbladets litteraturpris 2004 De Nios Vinterpris 2012 Poetry, 239 p. Anna Hallberg Publisher Albert Bonniers Förlag Rights Anna Hallberg annatext@gmail.com Photo: Caroline Andersson