Trivial Everyday Things
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Jørgen Leth was one of Denmark's foremost modern poets and a leading international filmmaker. As a poet, he consistently employed unostentatious, matter-of-fact language and exhibits strong filmic qualities, often in the form of notes and stage directions. Poems and films: two sides of his extensive ouevre, intricately interwoven. Watch the poem. Read the film. Leth was doing intertextuality almost before they called it anything. Trivial Everyday Things is a collection of Leth's poems spanning some forty years, selected and translated with exquisite restraint by Martin Aitken. It is, astonishingly, the first book-length collection of Leth's poetry to have appeared in English.
Jørgen Leth
Jørgen Leth (born 1937) is primarily know for films like The Perfect Human, playfully revived by Leth and enfant terrible countryman Lars von Trier in the irresistible The Five Obstructions. Leth's latest (of forty-three), Erotic Man, recently premiered to rave reviews and walk-outs at the Toronto Film Festival. A long-time resident of Haiti, Leth now lives in The Dominican Republic.
Martin Aitken
Translated by
Martin Aitken has translated the work of contemporary Scandinavian writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Peter Høeg, Ida Jessen, and Kim Leine. He was a finalist at the U.S. National Book Awards 2018 and received the PEN America Translation Prize 2019 for his translation of Hanne Ørstavik's Love. His translation of Olga Ravn's The Employees was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. Aitken lives in Copenhagen.
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