Kim Simonsen published in the United States
Kim Simonsen’s 2013 poetry collection Hvat hjálpir einum menniskja at vakna ein morgun hesumegin hetta áratúsundið, entitled What good does it do for a person to wake up one morning this side of the new millennium in English, is being published in the United States today by Texas-based nonproft publishing house Deep Vellum. The work has been translated from Faroese into English by Randi Ward. Simonsen received the 2014 M. A. Jacobsen’s Award from Tórshavn City Council, while Ward’s translation was awarded the 2021 American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Prize.
The rhetorical title of this collection posits the crisis that is underway. Simonsen asks: as a species among species, all composed of the matter of the universe, how has our compulsion to classify everything hierarchically estranged us from ourselves, each other, and Earth’s ecosystems? Simonsen challenges our anthropocentric pursuit of knowledge, exploring humankind’s relationship with itself as an element of the natural world. What good does it do for a person to wake up one morning this side of the new millennium follows the struggles of its narrator as he reckons with intensifying estrangement from his fellow organisms, gradually turning to the greater kinship of matter to find continuity, connection, and solace.
The vulnerability of being alive at such a pivotal period in Earth’s history underpins this highly original, compact collection from Kim Simonsen, superbly translated by Randi Ward.
—Michael Favala Goldman, translator of Tove Ditlevsen’s The Trouble with Happiness.
It's so important to me, and to all of us at Deep Vellum, to be able to read the world, to peer into the minds, hearts, realities, and possibilities brought to us through foreign languages and cultures. Kim Simonsen’s writing shows us what poetry can do, and his artistry and imagination, brought to us by the inimitable Randi Ward, expand the reader’s reality in the most inspiring ways.
—Will Evans, CEO and Publisher at Deep Vellum Publishing & Bookstore.
A collection for those who loved Inger Christensen’s alphabet, Kim Simonsen’s What good does it do for a person to wake up one morning this side of the new millennium, translated by Randi Ward, has a resounding scientific soulfulness. Straightforward in its assessment of humanity’s likely future in the face of climate change, shadowed by our devastating choices, the book nevertheless finds a kind of wonder in the hard shapes of what can be known. The poems play with scale, moving through deep time and across the breadth of the universe, then pulling the focus to, for instance, a black coffee pot with a silvered spout. This wonderful mechanism brings to mind Tomas Tranströmer, and can create the effect of an almost dizzying metaphysics, or a humor marked by the bathos of humanity itself: “Among a hundred billion galaxies,/ with a hundred billion stars in each… those glasses/ make you look like Woody Allen.” English speakers owe a debt of gratitude to Randi Ward, who brings us these poems from the Faroese with the kind of confidence, deftness, and attention only a poet can give to another poet. Her translation is itself a work of art alongside Simonsen’s, and both are worthy of praise.
—Katie Farris, award-winning author of Standing in the Forest of Being Alive.
Kim Simonsen is a Faroese writer and publisher. He is the author of seven books, as well as numerous essays and academic articles. His latest poetry collection, Lívfrøðiliga samansetingin í einum dropa av havvatni minnir um blóðið í mínum æðrum, was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2024.
Randi Ward is a poet, translator, lyricist, and photographer from West Virginia. She earned her MA in Cultural Studies from the University of the Faroe Islands and has twice won the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Prize and also received the 2024 Faroese Award of Honour from the Faroese government for her contribution to translating Faroese literature into English.
