Waitress in Fall: Selected Poems

by Kristín Ómarsdóttir, Vala Thorodds (Translator)

For over three decades, Kristín Ómarsdóttir's poetry has thrived in the vanguard of Icelandic literature. Waitress in Fall offers anglophone readers the first substantial selection of her poems in translation. Spanning thirty years and seven collections, from her first to her latest, this is a wide-reaching introduction to a vital voice of contemporary European poetry.

Kristín's work resists the sweet, the neat or the certain. Her poems delight in the lush mess of actual life, in its hands and fingers, lemons and clocks, socks, soldiers, snow, mothers, knives, nightstands, sweat and crockery. If the domestic is at the heart of the work, it is a domesticity tinged with threat. Something ‘clear and ominous’ is taking shape between the lines. Images of placid mid-century housewifery confront a wildness pulsing below the surface, a womanhood at once natural and supernatural – of evening dresses woven from twigs, necklaces strung with worms, and socks knitted from saliva.

These are surreal, unsettling landscapes, in which children lap milk from trees and car tires are ‘soft as skin’. But Kristín's poems are also full of laughter, sex, and love. They accept vulnerability as a condition of intimacy. Erupting ‘wherever thirst is ignited’, they are not afraid to strike, to rage, recognising a right – a responsibility – to risk the necessary word, ‘to wound the language’.

Genres: Poetry, Scandinavian Literature

140 pages, Paperback

First published July 26, 2018

About the author

Kristín grew up in Hafnarfjörður. She studied Literature and Spanish at the University of Iceland, then pursued Spanish at the Universities of Barcelona and Copenhagen. She has published poetry, novels, short stories and plays.
Her first publication was the poetry book Í húsinu okkar er þoka (There is Fog in Our House) in 1987, and her first novel, Svartir brúðarkjólar (Black Wedding Dresses) came out in 1992.
Kristín has won many awards for her work, including the DV Cultural Prize for Literature for her 1998 novel Elskan mín ég dey (I Will Die, my Love).
Kristín has worked with other artists, such as the photographer Nanna Bisp Büchert, with whom she produced the book Sérstakur dagur (Special Day), in which poetry and photographs work together. She has also collaborated with Haraldur Jónsson on the film The Secret Lives of Icelanders.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Silence inside, silence outside.
In hard snow and broken sky.
When the moon ploughs.

Into the snow that had settled
longer ago than I suspected.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poet who I'm unfamiliar with, so didn't know what to expect. Unlike most poets who try and paint a beautiful canvas, Ómarsdóttir goes about her business in a different form, by writing about the nuts and bolts of actual life, and all the mess that goes with it. In a delightful, surreal, and wide-reaching way, It's poetry that doesn't feel like poetry, and yet it is. It's a fresh perspective, it breaks from the norm, and I'm all for that.

Bloody, lustful, domesticated, lush. it's a strange mixture all right. I Really enjoyed it.
Two poems below.

Waitress in Fall -

she wipes the blood from her face
(the sword)
rinses the apron in the cold cold water
(in the blue sink)
lays down the apron
the morning dew demands an answer
in order to dry
walks out

whether she murdered, was murdered
doesn’t matter

the autumn air is tender at foothills
clear as water in a truthpond
the morning dew rests
against the blue cheek

Headless Morning -

early one morning you receive in the post
the head of a man
damp with blood
on the doorstep

like the milk here before
like the morning papers of days gone by
like the letters in the envelopes

and the sound of a car engine grows distant

who wishes me ill?
you think at the same time as you
finger your neck

the sun and the morning songs of the birds
empty what’s left of the consciousness

[Serge ♆ Neptune · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am in awe of Kristín Ómarsdóttir. You could think of her as a nordic Anne Carson but she has her own thing going on. These poems dance on the page with flamboyancy and flare, filled with sometimes tender, sometimes disturbing, but always surreal images and improbable scenarios. I was lucky to get the second print and I do love the blue of the cover. A lot of attention has been given to the selection of the poems and their translation by Vala Thorodds and she has done an incredible job conveying their quirkiness and charm. The Afterword at the end is also an interesting read.

Favourites: Waitress in Fall, Fire, Dessert, Another Stage by the Rainbow, Guidance, Butterfly on a Canvas, Mountain Hike on a Summer's Day.

[sarah]

"…imbued with an element of fairy tale, of the Germanic variety, with all the attendant brutality and violence" is probably the best description of this collection though it's also funny, sensual, and corporeal in a delightful way. 

Dad calls me a flower
and mum doesn’t understand a thing.
No!
I am not a dry doughnut
you eat with milk.
I am a mussel,
prawn and fish cheek.
– A new potato in fall
buttered, with salt.
Skin ice-cold milk;
sometimes tepid
sometimes steamed.

[Chris]

The Fatalistic Poem and Dessert are so good.
There is a slyness in the writing, a wit. Some poems, reflecting on human nature, reminded me of Szymborska.

[Goodreeds User · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucid and fresh and very immediate - sometimes strikingly so, and other times in a way that's less engaging. There's so many bizarre images and ideas, some of them absolute gems and others maybe a bit confusing. The poems don't pull you into a world or a headspace so much as open the door and give you the option to walk into it yourself. There's a lot of great stuff in here, definitely one to revisit at another point in time.

[Linda Vituma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vienai dienai par daudz dzejas.
Bet ko lai dara, ja cilvēks apstāties nespēj?

Viena nesaprotama vārdu virtene pēc otras un nākamā, un vēl viena - kā spēļu automātā rauju vienroci atkal un atkal. Varbūt šoreiz man izdosies saprast?
Atkal nekā!
Par gudru vārdi?
Par maz man prāta?
Un ir!
Ir viens, ko saprotu, sajūtu, iztulkoju.
Trīs dzejnieces lasa dzeju par vīrieti pirātu džemperī un gaida viņa skūpstus.

Tomēr vienai dienai par daudz dzejas.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful

[Jared Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

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glassbreasts

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems translated from Icelandic, taken from the poet's seven collections.

from Garden in a Metropolis: "The rain grows. / On the endless silence of man. / No got not a soul / under the curtain of trees."

from Summer's Day: "the wind emits a sound / but can't be seen or touched / the laundry in its place on the clothesline / duvet covers and sheets, and the sun"

from Applemilk: "eat the apple, drink the milk // and the context of existence / that the poets seek / is found"