there are dead in countries
who will never know how
little I despised them
I wanted the penblade
not the bootsplatter trenchlife
the night I ran there was
sky concealing thunder
a white feather of moon
*
the words give heavy page
the words bleed out of me
bullstrong I like to think
of guns the sound of rain
Hemingway’s forearm thick
as tree root men are dead
who never wondered what
I thought or why or not
*
I am deadheavydrunk
sharpen penblade moonglint
now think of Hemingway
swallowing a shotgun
now think of bulls enraged
now think of men who can’t
be men without dying
of rain of Thanes of Harr
Notes on this poem
I consider these to be modern versions crafted from literal translations. I was asked by Dr Deborah Potts, of Cambridge University, to be part of the ‘Modern Poets on Viking Poetry’ project; literal translations of skaldic poets, in this case Egill Skallagrímsson, were offered to poets to work on, together with detailed background notes on themes and ideas. I wanted to capture the mood and feel of the extracts, which join words and violence together; there is a tone which feels to me overtly masculine, and I wanted to consider what an updated version might feel like.
It has, at its core, anxieties of war, conscientious objection and masculinity. The compound words are my play on the tradition of kennings. I have tried to maintain the innovative form, diction and imagery present in the original tenth-century oral pieces, first recorded in written form in the thirteenth century. I’d like to thank Dr Deborah Potts for providing a literal translation of the poem ‘Ókunna Þér Runna’ on which I based this version.
