Part lambasting of gender roles and capitalist absurdity, part investigation into human-nature relationships, Stormwarning is the third collection of poetry by Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir, an up-and-coming poet in Iceland and abroad. In this collection, Tómasdóttir imbues her work with dark humor and understated Scandinavian dread, playing with language and expectations to leave her readers awaiting the coming storm.
Translator K.B. Thors, winner of the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Leif and Inger Sjöberg Award, will be moderating. Following the discussion, copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.
Icelandic events at Scandinavia House are made possible by the Consulate of Iceland in New York and Iceland Naturally in celebration of the centenary of Iceland’s independence and sovereignty.
About the Author
Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir (b.1985) has been active on the Icelandic poetry scene since her teenage years. Her poems have been translated into English, Danish, German, Finnish, Polish, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Arabic. Her own translations of Valerie Solanas´s feminist manifesto SCUM and Cuban author Virgilio Piñera’s poem La isla en peso have been published in Icelandic.
Tómasdóttir holds an MA degree in History from the University of Iceland. Her most recent work is a book on the history of pornography in Iceland.
About the Translator
An Icelandic-Ukrainian Canadian raised in rural Alberta, Canada, K.B. Thors has published translations from Icelandic and Spanish in The Harvard Review, The Scandinavian Review, Circumference, and Palabras Errantes. She holds a BA in Philosophy and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, where she was a Teaching Fellow in Poetry.
Thors is also an essayist and educator who before teaching writing worked in a sex-positive, woman-positive, and body-positive sex shop. Her debut poetry collection Vulgar Mechanics is forthcoming in 2019 from Coach House Press.
Iceland 100
1525719600
1525725000
Photo courtesy Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir; Book Jacket Courtesy Phoneme Media
MON—May 7—7 PM, free