New poetry collection

Writer Anna Malan Jógvansdóttir has released a new poetry collection. Kobberblod: Edderkoppens artsskifte gennem salt, jord, guld og luft (in English Copperblood: The Spider’s Transmutation Through Salt, Earth, Gold, and Air) is Jógvansdóttir’s third poetry collection and her first to be written in Danish originally. Danish publisher Det aarhusianske forlag Herman & Frudit has published her latest collection. Jógvansdóttir also illustrates her books herself.

Copperblood is a gripping poetry collection about becoming a mother. The poems revolve around the body – the body of a mother, bodies in the sea, and the hardships the body endures.

The poems move from the Faroe Islands into the transformative seas and their tangible, mythical worlds, which leave traces throughout Jógvansdóttir’s writing and drawings. It is poetry that radiates talent and deep sincerity.

In an inner oceanic realm, Jógvansdóttir writes with frustration, courage and hope for being a body in the world, and for feeling homeless within it. She explores what motherhood is and can be, and the unique time that follows – something every mother experiences in her own way.

Jógvansdóttir (b. 1995) is one of only a handful Faroese writers to have attended The Danish Academy of Creative Writing (2016-2018). She made her debut with the poetry collection Undirfloyma in 2015, followed by Korallbruni in 2018. Her debut novel Psykosudrotningin sigur frá, a self-described semi-biographical hybrid novel containing prose, poetry, diary entries and illustrations, was released in 2019. She re-wrote Korallbruni into the Danish Konkhjerte in 2021, also published by Det aarhusianske forlag Herman & Frudit. An English translation of poems from Korallbruni, translated by Matthew Landrum and Luciano Dutra, has featured in Asymptote Journal.