Full Description
Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark's leading poets. She has published over 20 books in Danish since her first collection appeared in 1981, and her work has been translated into many languages. She received the 1999 Nordic Council Literature Prize - Scandinavia's most prestigious literary award - for Queen's Gate, which was published in David McDuff's English translation by Bloodaxe in 2001. Also in 2001, she was appointed a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog, and in 2006 she received the Nordic Prize from the Swedish Academy. The Taste of Steel and The Smell of Snow are the first two collections in Pia Tafdrup's new series of books focussing on the human senses. While taste and smell dominate, the poems are equally about the way of the world and the losses that people sustain during the course of their lives - the disappearance of friends and family members, but also the erosion of control of one's own existence. The themes of ecology, war and conflict are never far away, and there is a constant recognition of the circular nature of life, the interplay of the generations. Pia Tafdrup's previous series of themed collections was The Salamander Quartet (2002-2012). Written over ten years, its first two parts were The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses, translated by David McDuff and published by Bloodaxe in 2010 as Tarkovsky's Horses and other poems. This was followed in 2015 by Salamander Sun and other poems, McDuff's translation of The Migrant Bird's Compass and Salamander Sun, the third and fourth parts of the quartet.
Contents
THE TASTE OF STEEL
I No return
15 Stages on life's way
16 In eternal pursuit
17 Unposted letter
19 Winter blood
20 Not even in museums is there peace
II Meditation
23 Stopping at the sight of swans
24 Plenty of time
25 Taste
27 Undercurrent
28 Loneliness
III Off track
30 Earring
31 After frost-white shell of cold
32 Japanese cherries
33 Night country
34 Metal
36 Bodies without root nets
37 Down
IV Crossroads
40 Power cut
42 Pont Neuf
44 Daily choice
45 The pets and their people
46 Time and space
V War
49 The darkness machine
50 Razed city
51 The journalist's question
52 The spring's grave
53 A before and an after
54 View from space
VI Waiting
57 Chink
58 A squirrel bids welcome
59 Despair drinks fire
60 Life with pigeons
62 Frog
VII Loss
65 The anonymous part of the churchyard
66 Each in our own flame
67 Porous border
70 A display case filled with night
72 On the other side
73 Greeting from the deceased
74 Snow flowers
76 Residue
78 Threshold
VIII Words
80 Crime scene
81 Mother tongue
82 Word and soul
83 Searchlight
84 Johan Borgen - a ritual
86 Poets
IX Paradox
89 Harvest
90 Separation
91 The taste buds wake up
92 We are born again
93 Animal smell of light
94 Killer whales
96 Early morning
THE SMELL OF SNOW
I Breathe in, breathe out
101 Spirit
102 Prana
103 Fresh snow
105 Under cirrus clouds
107 Your fragrance wakes me
109 Freezing fog
110 Lovesick bird
II Antitheses
112 Noses, a comparative study
114 Seduced by Gregory Pincus
115 Not a gift
116 Tags in the night
118 Cleaning poisons
120 Them or us
121 Digital odours
III Meditation
125 Spring inhalation
126 Exchange of smells
127 Danish cat meets Australian stone
128 Smell of tomatoes
129 Smell-trace of a morning
131 Camellia japonica
132 Benchmarks from a long day
IV Bloodstreams
137 Wrong number
138 Under the asphalt the Milky Way
139 Garlic
140 Nose to the ground
141 The cream from China
V The five seasons. A catalogue of smells
145 Spring
147 Summer
149 Autumn
151 Winter
153 The fifth season
VI Flashes of thought
157 Caught in the act
158 Smell blind
159 The meaning of meaninglessness
160 After showers of bullets in paradise
162 Words without smell
VII Vanishing
164 The smell can be parted from the body
165 Reflection on snow and ice
167 Intense lethargy
168 Glenmorangie Highland Single Malt
169 The end of icebergs
VIII Inner world, outer world
172 The smell greets me
173 Memory bank for smells
174 Insect wing
175 Nausea - a flashback
177 Stink
179 Flower shop
180 The primordial brain
IX One breath makes the difference
182 Attack in Copenhagen
183 Welcome, people live here
184 I want to be a tree
185 Twelve breaths
186 The smell of books
188 There has been prismatic rain
189 The stream of smells from below
191 Notes
