{"id":2638,"date":"2023-01-04T20:43:34","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T20:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2638"},"modified":"2023-01-04T20:43:34","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T20:43:34","slug":"tua-forsstrom-translated-by-david-mcduff-i-walked-on-into-the-forest-poems-for-a-little-girl-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2638","title":{"rendered":"Tua Forsstr\u00f6m, translated by David McDuff, I Walked On Into the Forest: Poems For a Little Girl – review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tua Forsstr\u00f6m\u2019s I Walked On Into the Forest<\/em> almost defeats commentary \u2013 the writing is so pure, transparent and direct that saying anything to or around it can seem worse than redundant. The whole book records the poet\u2019s trying to come to terms with the death of her granddaughter, Vanessa. Almost all the twenty-one short, numbered poems of the first section address Vanessa in language one might use to a child. Three lines from one called \u20183\u2019 can illustrate the sheer beauty and effortless resonance of the language, in David McDuff\u2019s translation:<\/p>\n

There are dreams that are more transparent than water
\nYou left perhaps to sleep far away
\nI write these letters to you of snow and rain<\/p>\n

Each line is a complete sentence that hangs in the air, shedding its own gentle and slightly enigmatic radiance, at an oblique angle to its neighbour.\u00a0 Occasionally, it\u2019s true, the figurative application of an image or memory is single and explicit, as in the last of these lines:<\/p>\n

You pressed your nose to the bus window and
\nhappily called all the mountains volcanoes,
\nand you were quite right
\nThe ground was thin under our feet<\/p>\n

Such one-dimensional overtness is rare, however. The gentleness of suggestion that I found in \u20183\u2019 seems to me a keynote. Memories and images are presented in a way that\u2019s both vivid and spare, with an emphasis on elemental or elementary natural phenomena that can be evoked in very few words. An extreme is reached in the seventeenth poem of the first section, which makes even haiku look verbose. This is the whole of it:<\/p>\n

Little grass
\ndear little grass<\/p>\n

But of course the working of these poems is very different to that of haiku. The images are multivalent in a way that feeds on their context in a Modernist sequence or group of sequences. Each image or memory fragment shines both in its own light and in the shifting play of light from those around it. As the book proceeds, the focus of attention broadens to include more generalised meditations on love and loss, the beauty and fragility of life and our relations to the natural world, but Vanessa\u2019s death remains at its heart.<\/p>\n

Not speaking Swedish, I can\u2019t comment on the accuracy of David McDuff\u2019s translation, but the sensitivity of its expression is a remarkable achievement throughout.<\/p>\n

Tua Forsstr\u00f6m<\/strong>, translated by David McDuff, I Walked On Into the Forest: Poems For a Little Girl<\/em>, 96pp, \u00a310.99, Bloodaxe Books<\/p>\n

I would like to thank Ann and Peter Sansom and Suzannah Evans for permission to post this extract from my review of books by Maurice Riordan<\/a>, Threa Almontaser<\/a> and Tua Forsstr\u00f6m in issue 68 of The North.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tua Forsstr\u00f6m\u2019s I Walked On Into the Forest almost defeats commentary \u2013 the writing is so pure, transparent and direct that saying anything to or around it can seem worse than redundant. The whole book records the poet\u2019s trying to come to terms with the death of her granddaughter, Vanessa. Almost all the twenty-one short, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tua-forsstrom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2639,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}