With Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl I
created the Frislandic poems of Hróbjartur Ríkeyjarson af Dvala for Twitters for a Lark: Poetry of the European
Union of Imaginary Authors.
Hróbjartur Ríkeyjarson af Dvala was born on Dvali, a small island (called Duilo on
some maps) offshore of the larger island
of Frisland in 1948. As a
child he was deeply steeped in the folklore of Frisland, but after education at
the University of Godmec in Historical Cartography, in 1976 he founded the
Black Volcano Poets who abandoned the complex (and frankly inexplicable)
metrics of traditional Frislandic verse in favour of open field metres and
post-surrealist content, with an American Beat tinge. An accomplished jazz vocalist,
he spent a year at Berklee School of Jazz in 1978, but dropped out to
concentrate on writing poetry and experimenting with hallucinogens. He taught
at various universities in the US
and, after a time as Visiting Writer at Argleton University
in North West England, he returned to Frisland, just in time to become
principal spokesman for the Ashen Revolution of 2002, which dragged Frisland
into the twentieth century. Ríkeyjarson af Dvala was elected to parliament, the
Lagadag, representing Ocibar, where he is a passionate advocate of Frisland’s (apparently
hopeless) candidacy for membership of the European Union. The poem here was
composed just after he left Berklee.
Frisland you ask? Well, I’d
already written the ‘Robert Sheppard’ poem that appears in the anthology, which
is about Ern Malley (and his hoax), appropriate as we approach Liverpool-born Ern's centenary, and the last lines are:
shoulders a volcanic island
erupting into fictive cartography
as fresh as the isle of Frisland
its cities of Ocibar and Godmec
his panama tilts into a sun disk
or twitters for a lark
which, of course, lend their
words to the title of the volume. Eirikur, who I met in Bangor, where I’d
appeared as Rene Van Valckenborch, was interested in fictional poems – and when
he suggested we forget the EU and deal with the mythical islands that appear
(just below his native Iceland on Renaissance maps) I jumped at it. We wrote
both an ancient poem
‘Joyful are boars when the swill is filled, and eager their
eating.
Quarrelsome are bears, as Beserkers when fearsome in the
field,
Once dairymen approach…’. etc
and the modern poem of Ríkeyjarson
af Dvala.
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet and novelist. For his
novel Illska (Evil, 2012) he was awarded The Icelandic
Literary Prize and The Book Merchant’s Prize, as well as being nominated for
the Nordic Council’s Literary Award. In 2012 he was poet-in-residence at the
Library of Water in Stykkishólmur, in 2013 he was chosen artist of the year in
Ísafjörður and in 2014 he was writer-in-residence at Villa Martinson in Sweden.
Since his debut in 2002 he has published six books of poems, most recently Hnefi
eða vitstola orð (Fist or words bereft of sense, 2013) and two
collections of essays. Eiríkur is active in sound and performance poetry,
visual poetry, poetry film and various conceptual poetry projects. Eiríkur has
translated over a dozen books into Icelandic, including a selection of Allen
Ginsberg’s poetry. He lives in Ísafjörður, Iceland, a rock in the middle of the ocean, and
spends much of his time in Västerås,
Sweden, a town
by a lake.
He appeared on videotape at the
August 2017 EUOIA Night in Manchester
(he’d read the month before at The Other Room)
All the collaborators are introduced at links available here.
Read more about the European Union
of Imaginary Authors here and here.
More on
Twitters for
a Lark here
and
here.
See also
A Translated Man which
collects the Van Valckenborch poems ( an early account
here;
the book is also available from Shearsman
here.)
