Featured Poet: Gerður Kristný

Eyewear is very glad to welcome to these pages, today, the Icelandic poet and novelist Gerður Kristný (pictured). Kristný was born in 1970, and has a degree in French and comparative literature from the University of Iceland.  She is a successful children's novelist, as well as one of her country's leading poets.  She is married, and has a family.


She travels widely to international festivals, such as the recent Maastricht International Poetry Nights (October 28-30) where I met her as a fellow reader.  I was impressed with her reading style, and the look of her spare, decisive poems on the page.  She explores the Sagas, religious images, myth, feminist concerns, relationships, and the icy landscape of her home, in her minimalist, clipped, ironic, and suggestive poems, which contain the proverbial nine-tenths of their force and heft beneath their surfaces.


 Departure

At the end

of the ramp

I inadvertently glance back

but you have vanished from view

Beyond the glass

a new day lifts itself

off the pavement

the blue of the mountains

spreads across my mind

as I turn

to continue on my way

I trip on my hem

my journey’s designed

for a bigger woman than me

The plane waits on the runway

and I feel as if

the propeller’s bitter blades

have entered my heart

poem by Gerður Kristný; translated by V.A. Cribb.  Poem posted with permission of the author.