It seems that God has cho­sen a few hun­dred, or at the very most a cou­ple of thou­sand, in each nation for the buy­ing of poet­ry col­lec­tions. Poet­ry is pub­lished in small print runs and the shelves of poet­ry does­n’t take up much space at the book­store. That’s how it is in Den­mark and in most oth­er coun­tries – even in Chi­na with a pop­u­la­tion of 1.4 bil­lion it is rare that a poet­ry col­lec­tion becomes a bestseller.

When trav­el­ling the world and spend­ing time in air­ports, you are plain­ly con­front­ed with these unshake­able facts. There is always a book­store in the air­port, but too often the shelves hold no poet­ry what­so­ev­er. At the front of the counter are mys­ter­ies and cur­rent best­sellers with flashy cov­ers. More mod­est­ly placed you may find a sec­tion of clas­sics, but no poet­ry! I find that rather unam­bi­tious – poet­ry has aes­thet­ic dimen­sions you can­not find in prose. It evokes emo­tions in a more direct man­ner and focus on themes of impor­tance for everyone.

Recent­ly on my way home from Peru I had to change planes at Heathrow and was in tran­sit there a few hours. I went into the book­store and was pre­sent­ed with the gloomy fact: No poet­ry. Aston­ish­ing! The UK is an old nation­al cul­ture with proud tra­di­tions in poet­ry. British poets have writ­ten so much excep­tion­al and emblem­at­ic poet­ry. Would it not be appro­pri­ate for every book­store in the coun­try to car­ry Blake, Yeats, Pound, Auden, Elliot or Ted Hugh­es, Sylvia Plath and Sea­mus Heaney? In order to find a solu­tion to the mys­tery I approached the friend­ly young clerk. “Sor­ry,” he said with­out shame, “Poet­ry doesn’t sell.”

You could receive the same answer in a book­store in Copen­hagen. And we are very well aware of it; the mar­ket forces dri­ve life on our plan­et. How­ev­er, the prob­lem is that if poet­ry isn’t to be found in a book­store it will nev­er get the chance to prove its via­bil­i­ty. If read­ers are only fed mys­ter­ies and best­sellers we will all become more stu­pid, our brains will with­er and our souls lose their wings. There ought to be poet­ry on the shelves of every book­store with a sense of pro­fes­sion­al pride and self-respect. 

I actu­al­ly don’t think that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion among book­sellers gives a true pic­ture of the esteem of poet­ry among read­ers. Poet­ry lives, is doing well and flour­ish­es like nev­er before. It fol­lows its own chan­nels to con­nect with read­ers.  Fes­ti­vals and read­ings gath­er many enthu­si­asts who enjoy lis­ten­ing to poet­ry and who may buy a book or two at the same time. And that makes sense because poet­ry orig­i­nat­ed in the mar­ket square and in the bazar, where poets have recit­ed since antiquity.

Among Dan­ish poets Inger Chris­tensen was unique. A great per­former and an emi­nent poet. When she died a few years ago The Guardian called her “one of the most sig­nif­i­cant Euro­pean poets of the 20th Cen­tu­ry” – and states in the same breath that “She was Dan­ish, and it is a mis­for­tune for any great writer to be con­fined to a lan­guage with few read­ers.” That may be true, but Inger Chris­tensen crossed the lan­guage bar­ri­er with Alpha­bet – a long poem full of won­der at the world and nature, and keen­ly aware of our threats to them – and But­ter­fly Val­ley, a requiem in the form of a cycle of son­nets of over­whelm­ing beau­ty and deep exis­ten­tial insight.

Among women poets one should also men­tion Pia Juul and her fairy­tale poet­ry full of cru­el­ty and mag­ic and Naja Marie Aidt who lives in New York and who with Alt­ing blink­er [Every­thing is Gleam­ing] explores the feel­ing of being a stranger in a new place in the world. An acces­si­ble, humor­ous and absurd sen­si­bil­i­ty char­ac­ter­izes much of her work that is favored by read­ers.  As is Pia Tafdrup, who has been trans­lat­ed into Turk­ish by Murat Alpar.

One of the most impor­tant Dan­ish poets is Hen­rik Nord­brandt. In book upon book he chal­lenges him­self and the Dan­ish lan­guage and in some mirac­u­lous way he almost seems to grow younger and more play­ful with the years. Hen­rik Nord­brandt is well known in Turkey where he has lived sev­er­al times. He speaks the lan­guage and has many friends among Turk­ish poets. For­tu­nate­ly he has also writ­ten a Turk­ish cook­book, Damelår og andre spe­cialiteter [Lady thighs and oth­er Spe­cial­i­ties ], that intro­duce hun­gry Danes to the won­ders of Turk­ish cuisine.

Peter Poulsen and Thomas Boberg should also be count­ed among dis­tin­guished Dan­ish poets. And recent­ly a col­lec­tion of Peter Laugesen’s poet­ry was pub­lished in Turk­ish trans­la­tion, Sin­cabın Sak­ladığı Sözcük­ler (Yapi Kre­di Yayin­lari, 2011). Lauge­sen writes a sur­re­al­is­tic diary-like poet­ry, inspired by his own expe­ri­ences of dai­ly life, like going for a walk and change con­ver­sa­tions with ran­dom passers by. His book was also trans­lat­ed by Murat Alpar, who togeth­er with Hüseyin Duygu, is of invalu­able impor­tance as cul­tur­al bridge builders between Turkey and Denmark.

Final­ly I want to men­tion Erik Sti­nus a fine poet and a dear friend who died a few years ago. Dur­ing his last year alive he received “Ulus­lararası Nazım Hik­met Şiir Ödülü”. At that event the fes­ti­val direk­törü Sal­ih Zeki Tombak said, “Erik Sti­nus, okuyu­cuyu Dan­i­mar­ka şiirinin ironik karak­ter­lerinden uza­k­laştırır. Sti­nus, buna karşılık batı şiirinin yaşayan­dan yola çıkan, yaşadığı Çağa tanık­lık eden büyük bir ozandır. Yaşam boyu bütün eser­lerinde ortaya koy­duğu insancıl öz ve sanat­sal başarı­dan dolayı ödülün ken­di­sine ver­ilme­sine karar verildi”.

That’s how it is: poet­ry is the nec­es­sary breath and oxy­gen of lan­guage. There is every rea­son for opti­mism and to feel good about the state of things. Poet­ry may not be dis­played at the front of the book­store and it rarely reach­es the top of the best­seller lists. Instead good poet­ry is long-lived. As the clas­si­cal Chi­nese poets Li Bai (701 – 762) notes in a fragment:

Per­fect poems
Are the only buildings
That always stay standing

 

Niels Hav, Copen­hagen, 2013

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