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Essays, Manifestos, Statements, Speeches, Maxims, Epistles, Diaristic Jottings, Narratives, Natural histories, Poems, Plays, Performances, Ramblings, Revelations, and all such ephemera as may appear necessary to bring society into a slight tremolo of confusion and fright at least.

PIP Biographies

Katrine Marie Guldager

[Denmark]

1966

Born December 29 th, 1966, in Ordrup, Denmark, Guldager moved at the age of three with her family—her father working in forestry and her mother in charity—to Zambia, where attended what she describes as “an old-fashioned school with British discipline.” When she returned to Denmark she lived in a housing community in Hillerød, where 27 families lived a communal life. She notes that the new school was a left-wing institution, which she disliked.

When her parents divorced, Guldager was just 13; she began writing, and at Copenhagen’s University, she studied literature. She has remained in Copenhagen since that time, and attended the famed Copenhagen School of Creative Writing.

Her debut collection of poems was Dagene skifter hænder (The Days Change Hands), which combined the ordinary with a strong sense of irony, and, along with her second collection Styrt of 1995, brought her major attention. That book also was translated into English as Crash.

In 1996 she published another volume of poetry, Blank, and more recently she published Ankomst Husumgade (Arrival at Husumgade, 2001), a comical long poem in prose. Guldager has also written dramas, collections of short stories (København, 2004 and Kilimanjaro, 2005), and a novel, Det grønne øje (The Green Eye, 1998). She won The Critics’ Prize in 2004.

Critic Lars Bukdahl wrote in the Kristelight Dagblad of Crash: “Whereas her first book was convincing but also somewhat hesitant, here in Crash there is not the slightest slip. This book of 37 prose poems is almost frighteningly assured and original, with not a single weak text to be found—a little ‘already-a-classic.’”

BOOKS OF POETRY:

Dagene skifter hænder (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1994); Styrt (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1995); Blank (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1996); Ankomst Husumgade (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2001).

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS:

Crash , trans. by Anne Mette Lundtofte (Brownsville, Vermont: Goats + Compasses, 1999).

[Reprinted from Susanne Jorn, ed., The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20 th Century, Volume 8: In Transit—Sixteen Contemporary Danish Poets (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2007).]
Copyright ©2007 by Douglas Messerli and Green Integer.