Seal Mother
Gerður Kristný
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From the publisher
The Icelandic poet, Gerdur Kristny, has published four collections of poetry with Arc, of which Seal Mother is the most recent. Winner of the Icelandic Women's Literature Prize 2023 and the Icelandic Booksellers' Prize for Best Poetry book of 2022, Seal Mother received universal praise upon publication.This spellbinding sequence of poems tells the story of the poet's great-great-grandmother, a midwife who lived on the northernmost coast of Iceland at the end of the nineteenth century. Drawing on the classical forms of Icelandic poetry, Kristny paints clear and simple pictures of the struggle for survival by the woman and her family in a narrative that is powerful and timeless.Her three previous collections, Bloodhoof (2012), Drapa (2018) and Reykjavik Requiem (2020) have all appeared from Arc in Rory McTurk's translation."In Kristny's work, we encounter a unique sensuality, intensity, and beauty. Nature, mythology, and human life come together in a fascinating synthesis... the collection ends with a mystical scene in which the midwife-narrator helps a distressed seal to give birth to her pup. Seal Mother is a collection of concentrated, beautiful, refined, and moving poems."-Peter Stein Larsen, Kristeligt Dagblad (Denmark)