Kristina Frostenson's
The Space of Time
arrives as our second entry in an unnamed series of literature in translation. Brought over from the Swedish and tuned to an English key by the skilled ear of Bradley Harmon, Frostenson's ecopoetic opus guides readers through the internal and external geographies of a planetary grief.
is a study of the background noise that pollutes our respective presents and potential futures, the dissonant affective tones and linguistic whitecaps brought on by the rising tides of waste and loss. Most importantly, in the face of climate anxiety, Frostenson pushes back against apathy, finding agency in the word:
Feel the current of language
The crosspollination, the meeting of the unfamiliar
So that you again get a feel for what language can be
Always remember what language can be
Speak not. Do. For
the language of poetry may be dying. Nettles, the sprawl, the amorphous
springing forth, searching with snout and scent across the earth
the mundane remains, a voice says resist
By force must the song be written
In Sweden, the collection bore the title
Sånger och formler
(Songs and formulae), and was selected for the 2016 Nordic Council Literature Prize, earning substantial critical acclaim. Aase Berg called it
"a collection to be read many times."
Magnus Ringgren wrote,
"Its three suites are roads, streams, wanderings. They lead in different directions but collect bits and pieces of consciousness that become an itinerant unity, an image of life."