Monthly Archives: August 2011
Louisiana Literature and VMO
Vild Med Ord literature festival September 1.-4.
Autumn has kicked in and what better way to celebrate it literati style than to go to a couple of literary festivals. A couple of weeks ago I was cordially invited by one of the organisers of Vild Med Ord to the literature festival in Aarhus for the mere fact that I am a literature blogger in Denmark. Major props their way, it’s about time someone gives me something for blogging about literature 🙂
Joking aside, its nice to know that someone is thinking outside the box, widening the field etc., when it comes to these kinds of events – Denmark is such a small community that it easily can end up being the same three established people having an opinion about literature. Not to say anything negative about that, because those three also have experience and expertise within literary critique. Anyways, I skip-jumpingly accepted to come on Sunday, not even thinking about the fact that it is on the other side of the country. So now I must find a way of getting to the festival without tearing myself a new one. It should be manageable. So far, buses are my first option, DSB is in the very bottom position… And then ahead of me will lie eight hours of book readings, debates, book browsing etc. with appearances by the likes of Cia Rinne, Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen, Carsten Jensen and Rune T. Kidde to mention a few who will attend VMO on Sunday. I have not yet fully decided if I will go but the program sounds really good. Warm-ups have been going on since the 26th of August, but the actual festival starts tomorrow.
Another literature festival starting tomorrow and also ending on September 4th is Louisiana Literature, hosted by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. And mamma mia, boy oh boy, have they got a spread of names for us!  For a mere 150 DKK (and of course, plus the train ticket costs x4) you get to see and hear readings and interviews with Junot Diaz (Oscar Wao mentioned here), Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (The thing around your neck review here), GyrĂ°ir ElĂasson (winner of the Nordic Council’s Literature Award 2011), Merete Pryds Helle (mentioned here) and so on and so on. I am planning on live-tweeting and blogging my way through the weekend, you are welcome to follow me on Twitter if you cannot be there yourself or if you for some other reason want to know what my tweets are about – I pass no judgement as to what reason you could have to stalk my tweets :).
Louisiana Literature September 1.-4.
Recommendation: The museum has also arranged sound excursions for its visitors; that is, you listen to a work on an mp3-player while either walking around or going to a specific location on the museum grounds. For example, there is one reading in the toilet facilities at the museum read by Gary Shteyngart, or what about a stroll through a specific collection at the museum while listening to a reading by Pejk Malinovski (who incidentally is the producer of the sound excursions). I would very much recommend this. On the Louisiana web page they have one work by Inger Christensen read by Maja Lee Langvad og Kristina Nya Glaffey called the “Food Alphabet” in an update version. It is amazing, do listen to it (either press the link here below, or go to Louisiana Literature web page and download it  here – just look in the right hand corner mid-page).
Just to set your anticipation up a bit if you trust my judgement: I am in love with it! The reading is so good, sounds are well-rounded, recording excellent, and I think it will be an even greater experience listening to it while sitting in the museum café 🙂
Here’s hoping for yet another great week(end).
UPDATE: And the weekend just got much better. Litteratursiden.dk was kind enough to give me tickets for the festival in return for a post on their site – big thanks and do check them out  here – so now I don’t have to worry about the cost. I wonder if Turidbloggar will want to come with me to play photographer?!
Danish immigrant literature
I have been schooled! I might have claimed in my last post that Danish immigrant literature is practically non-existent, but this is not true. I will however still assert my claim that immigrant literature in this country is not much profiled due to some apparent reasons: interest is not that high, those who are profiled as immigrant authors don’t necessarily want their works to be classified as such, and there aren’t that many immigrant authors as opposed to ethnic Danish authors. Some would argue that the immigrant literary scene in Denmark is not as much evolved and refined as our neighbours to the north (Sweden) or those to our left (UK), and this has great bearing on the amount of literature from this specific area. Of course, right at this moment Tarek Omar with his MuhameDANEREN has just published a novel about the immigrant scene the common ethnic Dane only hears about through media. And incidentally, a good friend and colleague of mine, Charlotte, has also done some research in the area of Danish immigrant literature, and put me in my place 🙂 The interesting thing (as she told me, and I tend to agree) is that it is hard to define immigrant literature – what is an immigrant author? One foot (or 1 1/2) in another nationality or culture? And is this nationality to be much different from the Danish for it to be acknowledged as immigrant literature? Is someone whose parents came to the country in the 60s-70s from Pakistan more the ideal of an immigrant author than a blond girl born to Danish parents in Greenland who moved to Denmark at the age of 7?
Well, enough with the questionnaire, Charlotte has given me an impressive list of authors and I just have to pass it on to you guys and wish you a happy reading:
Naja Marie Aidt m.fl. (red.): anthology Nye Stemmer 2007
Amulya Malladi (1974):Â Lyden af bier 2009
Janina Katz (1939): Længsel på bestilling 2008
Birgithe Kosovic (1974):Â Det dobbelte land 2010
Alen Meskovic (1977): Første gang tilbage 2009
Milena Rudez (1958): collection of poems Verden bag glasset 2010
Muniam Alfaker (1953): Mindernes Trapez 2007
Arash Sharifzadeh Abdi (1972): collection of poems Kvasidansk 2009
Sadegh Javadi (1962): I skæbnens favn 2009
Lone Aburas (1979): Føtexsøen 2009 + Den svære toer 2011
Manu Sareen (1967): various children’s books
Özlem Cekic (1976): Fra Føtex til Folketinget 2009
Tine Flyvholm (red.): anthology Pære-perker-dansk 2011
Marco Goli: Fundér fra 2001
Rubén Palma: Fra lufthavn til lufthavn – og andre indvandrerfortællinger 2001
Adil Erdem: Rejsen ud af mørket 2003
Duna Ghali: poetry collection En have med duft af mand 2007
Murat Alpar: poetry collection Mågen er et stort bogstav 2002
Author’s with an adoptive background writing about national identity
Maja Lee Langvad: poetry collection Find Holger Danske 2004
Eva Tind Kristensen (1974): poetry collection Do 2009
…in Berlin
Books, paper and language course book
It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything, but I have had so much to do lately that I barely have had time to do my work, let alone anything extra curricular. But as the title would insinuate; I am in Berlin!!! This is the third week of my German Intensive course (out of four) and it is very hard, but I am starting to see very encouraging glimpses of hope in the horizon. It’s been so long since I have studied German grammar, and as those who try to learn it would agree with me, it is not really the easiest language to learn. The course is from 9 am to 3 pm every day (and then there are the Hausaufgaben), so I have little time to see the city – nonetheless, I make it a personal goal to see parts of Berlin every week, even if it is just a cup of coffee in a Kreuzberg cafĂ©. Like they say, you can’t learn the language if you don’t use it in public (or I say…).
One of the lovely members of Beinglorious was in Berlin at the start of my course (for the umptheenth time :)) and we made a coffee date. She was very kind about my many uhh’s and aaahh’s and eeeeh’s, stuttering and butchering my way through sentences in German (she is German, just to clarify the situation), but I actually think it helped a lot – it’s only when you verbalise what you learn throughout the day in a stuffy classroom that you are aware of what you are saying and in what situation. We came past a second-hand bookshop and of course had to stop a couple of hours, browsing.
There was a lot of good literature in there, and I bought a couple of books, one of which was Ovid’s Love Books. We had a segment of his literature in one of the earliest semesters at uni. From what I can remember I found it very brazen, something I didn’t expect, and I am looking forward to reading it in German.
E-reader with Gertrude Stein as screensaver – what more could a gal ask for?
In other news, I am now the proud owner of my very own e-book reader!! Yessir, bobsky, hubby came to visit me in Berlin with a nice red packaged present containing an e-reader. He of all people can appreciate an affection for electronica, and so he thought it was only suitable, since I had been rambling on and off about e-readers the last 2 years, but never actually owned one, that I got one for myself 🙂 Unfortunately, I don’t have time to read in it so much these days, but I am betting on it being the best 3-hour wait in the terminal and 1-hour flight back home ever! There are already over 500 books on it, so the only trouble I will have is to make up my mind which one to start on… Unfortunately, there is as of yet almost no literature in German on it. Where does one buy German literature for one’s e-reader?
Foer, Eggers, Schami and Tellkamp
Yesterday I went into town after uni (just to not go straight home and hit the books) and I of course ended up in a bookstore – endresult: 4 books, 2 postcards and a bookmark. Since I have become more aware of the massive (and in many cases, unnescessary) meat consumption, and Jonathan Safran Foer at the International Author’s Stage in Copenhagen made such an impact on me, I had to buy his book – I’ve heard it’s not that rah-rah, but then again, I could be surprised. And of course since I am in Germany I picked up Uwe Tellkamp’s ‘Der Turm’ that was much hypened in literary circles back home. Rafik Schami’s book I bought because I want to get some sort of feel for Germany’s Migrantenliteratur – not a lot of that going on in Denmark, apart from Manu Sareen’s children’s books, and a couple of short stories in the 2007 Anthology of Forfatterskolen, I am having trouble coming up with what else is there, so I am speculating that it really is a blank spot in Danish literature. The last one I bought is Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. It is set in Bush-era and Hurricane Katrina time, and it questions the political and social structure of the US, when a Syrian-American man is arrested and held imprisoned for 23 days without proper legal process in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans.
Anywhoo, enough of this, I am going to do some weekend sightseeing: stops along the way include Marga Schöllers Bücherstube, Käthe Kollowitz Museum, Zara (not really a sightseeing/cultural point, but if I come across one, I go into one), Dalà at Potsdamer Platz and, if I have time, a quick stop at the 15. Internationale Berliner Bierfestival on Karl-Marx-Allee.
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