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In The Forbidden Door, poets Carolyn Forche and Lars Gustaf Andersson masterfully translate the selected poems of Swedish poet Lasse Söderberg in one of his first substantial volumes in the English language. Söderberg has embraced and celebrated the phantasmagoria of life itself over a span of seventy years, in verse heavily influenced by Surrealists Paz and Eluard. "The air is like gold leaf," he writes, "I take a deep breath/and become gilded inside." The author of more than thirty books of poetry, Söderberg strikes different poses - embodying different cultures and political moments - and moves easily from one reality to another. See for yourself why Ilya Kaminsky calls this "one of the most important and moving collections of poetry in translation that I have read this decade."
Lasse Söderberg
Lasse Söderberg was born in 1931 in Stockholm, Sweden. He is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, and he is the foremost translator of post-war contemporary poets into Swedish from French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, German, English, and Italian, including Octavio Paz, Yves Bonnefoy, Charles Simic, Jorge Luis Borges, André Breton, and Rafael Alberti. He founded International Poetry Days, a festival in Malmö, Sweden, and continues to arrange events in Malmö with his wife, Colombian poet Ángela García Ines Castrillon. He has received numerous awards for his poetry in Sweden and was named to an honorary professorship by the Swedish government in 2002. In 2019, he received the Max Jacob Prize in Paris. This is his first substantial volume in English.
Lars Gustaf Andersson
Translated by
Lars Gustaf Andersson, also from Sweden, is professor in film studies at Lund University. His main research interests are experimental cinema and alternative production and distribution of film. He is the other author of the book above.
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