I would like to thank Kristín Ómarsdóttir for entrusting me with her words and giving generous and insightful annotations, being forthcoming and kind throughout the process. Thank you also to Luke Allan, my first and last reader, for believing in and encouraging this project from its inception and for being the finest editor in England. Many thanks also to my amma, Þorbjörg Þóroddsdóttir, for allowing me to do much work on this book at her dining room table in Garðabær, and for taking a great interest in the project, resolving many queries about some of the more formal language.
* * *
The capitalisation of titles in the table of contents and on the section title pages reflects the original texts. Likewise all idiosyncrasies of punctuation have been retained. In a few cases, with the author’s approval, the italicisation of speech and similar elements has been adjusted in order to establish consistency and clarity.
‘Fire’ (‘Eldur’) was an existent alternative title for the poem ‘Þórukonuljóð’, provided by the author. In ‘Nightpoem of the Washer-up’, the subject was changed from ‘son’ to ‘daughter’. ‘Quatrain’ was originally three lines long and bore the Icelandic title ‘Staka’, which can mean either ‘Verse’ or ‘Quatrain’. The poem’s lineation was adjusted so that it ran to four lines rather than three, in order to accommodate the preferred English title. Again, these changes were made in agreement with the author.
‘Napoleon’s hat’ buns (p. 103) are Icelandic marzipan pastries shaped to vaguely resemble Napoleon Bonaparte’s bicorne hat.
spiders in shop windows is a sequence of poems rather than a collection of discrete works. Though the entire sequence could not be included, the selected poems are presented in their relative sequential order.
Icelanders have patronymic names and are thus always referred to by their given names, even when using honorific titles, hence the reference simply to ‘Kristín’ on the cover and in the editorial material.
The book’s epigraphs are from Sasha West’s poem ‘Agriculture Begins’ in Failure and I Bury the Body (Harper Collins, 2013); and Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse (Chatto & Windus, 2016).
The translations in this book are based on the following first editions, most of which I checked out of the Reykjavík City Library in Grófin (all but two being currently out of print): Í húsinu okkar er þoka (self-published, 1987); þerna á gömlu veitingahúsi (Mál og menning, 1993); Lokaðu augunum og hugsaðu um mig (Mál og menning, 1998); Sérstakur dagur (Mál og menning, 2000); Jólaljóð (Salka, 2006); Sjáðu fegurð þína (Uppheimar, 2008); kóngulær í sýningargluggum (JPV, 2017). I would like to acknowledge that in the process of translating this book I paid the equivalent of about £36 in library late fees.
In the afterword, Andrew Motion’s comment about Ted Hughes is from his conversation with Paul Muldoon on the New Yorker poetry podcast of 19 April, 2017. Eavan Boland’s comments about poetry are from A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet (Carcanet, 2011).
A few of the translations in this collection have previously appeared in the magazines Granta, PN Review, and Pain.