A Sudden Sky: Selected Poems

by Ulrikka S. Gernes

A Sudden Sky is a book of northern poems with crystalline images and lines, fragile graceful poems that speak of fragments, of the moment between open and closed eyes, of the human need for embrace. These poems note the spaces between things - always a gap, a failed connection, like radio waves caught in the sky.

I REFUSE to accept the spine's dictated script which at the precise moment lets itself dissolve, lets itself be inserted as a footnote of terror in the great law that has condemned us to carry the quake's loosening when the alibi doesn't hold and the body surrenders itself when dawn cleans up among the stars

Gernes has called poetry "a resistance movement," explaining "A poem gives us the possibility of hearing our own voices. While the media offer us the world in small pieces, which are experienced as chaos, poetry seeks connections."

112 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

Ulrikka S. Gernes was born in 1965 in Sweden to Danish parents. At the age of twenty-two she moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, already a published and highly acclaimed poet. Her first collection, Natsvoermer, was published in Denmark in 1984, when she was eighteen years old. Since then she has published an additional ten collections, all of them received gratefully in the Danish press. She is also the author of two books for children, as well as many short stories, songs, and various contributions to literary anthologies, art catalogues, magazines, newspapers and Danish National radio.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's so interesting to see a retrospective of a poet who I've only read one book of before (because of her mostly writing in Danish). The poems span from 1984 to present time, and each section (marked out by time) has a distinct flavour to it. Gernes has such an unparalleled talent of being able to write with spareness and also lushness, to splice the dead with the living, and the living with the dead, and to open up the sky for all her readers to admire along with her. It's an honour to be able to read more of her poetry in English once more.

[Melanie Zado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beauty!