Viola Bao: No, the critics, poetry is either petrified or passé

Is samtidspoesin marginalised, and petrified? This has been suggested several times over the past week. The first of the Victor Ore ( Expressen 14/1) in the reading of the four newly released poets in the small publisher of the Pequod draws the conclusion that samtidspoesin is ”objectively passé”. On one hand it is, he says, is locked into the old aesthetic conventions, on the other hand, in a periphery without readers. A few days later, he was joined by Rebekah Kärde, that on the question of the solidified form says, ”undoubtedly yes” ( DN 17/1), and further argues that poetry today is characterised by ”a total utraderande of all individuality”.

But how tantalizing it is to toss with categorical judgments, it would seem, as well as arbitrarily to exalt the few, yes, just marginalised poets – in reader statistics, but honestly also litteraturkritiskt – from two småförlag to the representatives of the samtidspoesin as a whole. Perhaps you can understand Malm's lamentations on the poetry's peripheral position – I remember a time when critics used to fight tooth and nail for poetry the right to be ”incomprehensible” as an expression of a changed kritikerförväntan.

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the rather that poetry has moved in a more and more popular with audiences direction the last few years, where last year's Augustprisvinnare Linnea axelsson's melancholy epic ”Aednan” appears as just one among many signs of the times. The efficacy of talspråklighet we know from the Danish poetry has reached Sweden, with poets such as Hanna Every Lundström, Johanna Peace and Gordana Spasic. A relaxation of the rågångar that separated förlagsutgiven poetry from spoken word has partly taken place, with the debut of Nino Mick and Yolanda Bohm Ramirez – parallel to poetry slamen grown bigger than ever, not least with the competition the best in the poet.

in Addition, I am probably not alone in having noticed, a more general movement from a språkkritiskt oriented to a higher degree of experience and subjektsorienterad poetry of the last decade, which also included diktjaget risen in the course. When I began to write literary criticism for five years ago was seen even the remains of a språkkritiskt paradigm – that can be traced to the magazine OEI – sprawled across each and every other volume of poems, at the team already solidified to dry formulas and now virtually disappeared.

Johannes Anyuru.

In comparison with this poetry proves just a glance at the last six months of the publication – from the Jonas Gren återappropriering of the scoffed at naturlyriken, Lina Rydén Reynols posthuman subjektslösa textsjok, Iman Mohammed's condensed bildsprång – how bizarre the claim of the solidified sameness is. Also in the past språkkritiska poets have moved with the passage of power: Fredrik Nyberg hardcover språkintrospektion in previous collections of poetry have transponerats to a far more geopolitically charged place in the staggering ”Offerzonerna” (2018), while the Ida Börjel approached jaglyriken in the expansive ”Ma” (2014).

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such as is given out is of course habilt or worse, anything else would be strange. But what distinguishes our time, I think, is something else. For the first time in a long time it seems, poetry to be, in the absence of the large and normative critical narrative – such as OEI:s 00-the speech, the Crisis-generation fetischerade, 80's, or the magazine 10TAL's tired launch of ”the Swedish poesiboomen” for something years ago (most went on to launch two 10TAL-poets). What does this mean for poetry and poesikritiken?

Jila Elevated. Photo: Björn Larsson Rosvall / TT

The French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari wrote in his book about Kafka that countries without any strong kanonbildning are more able to cultivate a literature that is close to his own contemporary reality. Something similar I believe can be said about the lack of a dominant metaberättelser if samtidspoesin: it not only makes the poetry more free to explore itself, but also facilitates for the critics to get a glimpse at how sprawling it in the day actually is. (And perhaps always has been? Keep in mind the many poets that the myth of the ' 00's that OEI's decade deleted: Anyuru, Boyacioglu, Rapp Johansson, Elevated.)

the Generalization seems to sometimes be litteraturkritikerns greatest pleasure. But instead of tendentious throw himself with obscuring and simple narrative of that poetry is ”objectively passé”, perhaps we should start at the other end. That is to say, renounce the critical covetousness main fetish – revealing – and instead try to describe what we have in front of us.