Translations

Endless Summer

by Martin Glaz Serup
Translated from Danish by Christopher Sand-Iversen

Danish

Uendelige sommer
underlige indtryk
som at stirre lige ind i solen


Sære subtropiske dufte
i nåleskoven


Sære subtropiske dufte
i løvskoven


Sære subtropiske dufte
i byerne
på strandene


Brombærene burde ikke være fremme
allerede
sorte og overmodne


Grågule plæner
planter, udtørrede rodsystemer
mange meter under jorden


Joggeren siger:
Man skal bare vænne sig til vejret
drikke vand


Cafégæsten siger:
Før kunne man tale om vejret
det kan man ikke længere


Underlige dufte fra søerne også
fra havet, fra havene
selvlysende og smukke
blågrøn grød


Det er som algerne tænker
når det blæser lidt
hvad tænker de på


Ænderne har grønne næb


Ænderne har grønne ben


Menneskene er holdt op med at svømme i søerne


Menneskene er holdt op med at sove i sengene


På altanerne står de om natten
i underbukser og glor
på månen


Fra åbne vinduer
glaner de om morgenen
ud over markerne


Ud over støvet
ilden
og røgen


Der ligesom insekterne vokser
og vokser, tropiske klima


Ilden og apatien
vokser, tropiske klima


Apatien
der selv er et lamt lille ord
opgivende og mat
vokser


Apatien vokser
som havde den et omfang
vi kunne fatte
som havde den en krop
der lod sig øge
i det uendelige
vokser den

Martin Glaz Serup was born in Copenhagen in 1978, where he currently lives with his family. He has published five chapbooks, eleven children’s books, a book-length theoretical essay on poetry and relational aesthetics, and seven volumes of poetry. His poetry has been translated and published in Germany, Sweden, Finland, the United States, Mexico, and is forthcoming in Greece. His latest book, Reading Places (2018), is creative nonfiction dealing with place, memory, and reading—an odd autobiography as a reader. The book has just been accepted for publication in the United Kingdom and Finland. In 2015 he was awarded a PhD from the University of Copenhagen for his dissertation, Cultural Memory and Conceptual Witness Literature. Serup has been editor of several Danish and Nordic literary magazines and is blogging at the really old-school blog: Kornkammer. Currently Serup teaches poetics and creative writing at the University of Copenhagen and at the Writer’s School for Children’s Literature at Aarhus University.

Christopher Sand-Iversen holds a BA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MA in visual culture from the University of Copenhagen. He is the director of SixtyEight Art Institute, an independent organization in Copenhagen which supports artistic and curatorial research in the field of contemporary art, as well as a founder editor of its publishing house, RSS Press. He has previously worked at several museums in Denmark, in addition to translating literature, exhibition catalogues, and academic papers into English from Danish, Swedish, and German for numerous clients. His work appears in the White Review, Asymptote, and Poetry Wales among other publications.

FROM Volume 68, Number 2

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