Valzhyna Mort – författare

Ett ben är en nyckel till mitt folk.

Bland de mina är det bara de dödasom har mänskliga ansikten.

Valzhyna Mort skriver till, och i samtal med, ett antal döda släktingar. Hennes sökande efter dem, och sig själv, blir till grotesk, rolig och mycket allvarlig poesi, som genom vindlande musik flätar samman kollektiv och minne, historia och samtid, myt och individ.

Lägg dina ben till flätor av gravar, fält.Lägg dina ben till flätor av gravar, träsk.

Valzhyna Mort föddes 1981 i Minsk, Belarus. Musik för de döda och återuppståndna är hennes tredje bok, och den första som översätts till svenska. Hon är bosatt i USA och undervisar vid Cornell University.

»Valzhyna Mort skriver med en neurotisk, animerad energi fram ett sönderslaget, drömt historiskt arkiv över den belarusiska nutidshistorien, där döda och försvunna talar genom nattens träd.«  Viola Bao, Dagens Nyheter.

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL GRIFFIN PRIZENAMED ONE OF THE BEST POETRY BOOKS OF 2020 BY The New York TimesIn her book of letters to the dead, the prize-winning poet Valzhyna Mort relearns how to mourn those erased by violent history. With shocking, unforgettable lyric force, Valzhyna Mort’s Music for the Dead and Resurrected confrontsthe legacy of violent death in one family in Belarus. In these letters to the dead, the poet asks: How do we mourn after a century of propaganda? Can private stories challenge the collective power of Soviet and American historical mythology?Mort traces a route of devastation from the Chernobyl fallout and a school system controlled by ideology to the Soviet labor camps and the massacres of World War II. While musical form serves as a safe house for the poet’s voice, old trees speak to her as the only remaining witnesses, hosts to both radiation and memory.Valzhyna Mort, born in Belarus and now living in the United States, conjures a searing, hallucinogenic ritual of rhythmic remembrance in a world where appeals to virtue and justice have irrevocably failed.

"Mort...strives to be an envoy for her native country, writing with almost alarming vociferousness about the struggle to establish a clear identity for Belarus and its language." —The New Yorker

“Valzyhna Mort . . . can justly be described as a risen star of the international poetry world. Her poems have something of the incantatory quality of poets such as Dylan Thomas or Allen Ginsberg. . . . She is a true original.”—Cuirt International Festival of Literature

“[T]he searing work of Valzhyna Mort . . . dazzled all who were fortunate to hear her [and] to be battered by the moods of the Belarus language which she is passionately battling to save from obscurity.”—The Irish Times

"(Mort) is most characterized by an obstinate resistance and rebellion against the devaluation of life, which forces her to multiply intelligent questions, impressive thoughts, and alluring metaphors, while her rhythm surprisingly arises as a powerful tool for the most dramatic moments of her verses....One of the best young poets in the world today."—World Literature Today

Valzhyna Mort is a dynamic young poet who writes in Belarussian at a time when efforts are being made to reestablish the traditional language in the aftermath of attempts to absorb it into Russian. Known throughout Europe for her live readings, Mort’s poetry and performances are infused by the politics of language and the poetry of revolution, where poems are prayers and weapons.

when someone spends a lot of time runningand bashing his headagainst a cement wallthe cement grows warmand he curls up with itagainst his cheeklike a starfish . . .

Valzhyna Mort is a Belarussian poet known throughout Europe for her remarkable reading performances. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, and she is the recipient of the Gaude Polonia stipendium and was a poet-in-residence at Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, Germany. She currently lives in Virginia.

Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright earned an MFA in translation from the University of Arkansas. Franz Wright won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his book Walking to Martha’s Vineyard.

"Mort is a fireball. . . . Personal, political, and passionate, Mort's poetry will surely sustain many reading audiences. Highly recommended."—Library Journal

"A one-of-a-kind work of passion and insight."—Midwest Book Review

"Mort's style—tough and terse almost to the point of aphorism—recalls the great Polish poets Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska."—Los Angeles Times

Valzhyna Mort is a dynamic Belarusian poet, and Collected Body is her first collection composed in English. Whether writing about sex, relatives, violence, or fish markets as opera, Mort insists on vibrant, dark truths. "Death hands you every new day like a golden coin," she writes, then warns that as the bribe grows "it gets harder to turn down."

"Preface"

on a bare tree—a red beast,so still, it has become the tree.now it's the tree that prowls over the beast,a cautious beast itself.

a stone thrown at its breastis so fast—the stone has become the beast.now it's the beast that throws itself like a stone,blood like a dog-rose tree on a windy day,and the moon is trying on your facefor the annual masquerade of the dead.

death decides to wait to hear more.so death mews:first—your story, then—me.

Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus. Her American debut, Factory of Tears, appeared in 2008 and she was featured on the cover of Poets & Writers. She has received many honors and awards, including a Civitella Raineri fellowship. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

"Mort is a fireball. . . . Personal, political, and passionate, Mort''s poetry will surely sustain many reading audiences. Highly recommended."—Library Journal

"A one-of-a-kind work of passion and insight."—Midwest Book Review

"Mort''s style—tough and terse almost to the point of aphorism—recalls the great Polish poets Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska."—Los Angeles Times

Valzhyna Mort is a dynamic Belarusian poet, and Collected Body is her first collection composed in English. Whether writing about sex, relatives, violence, or fish markets as opera, Mort insists on vibrant, dark truths. "Death hands you every new day like a golden coin," she writes, then warns that as the bribe grows "it gets harder to turn down."

"Preface"

on a bare tree—a red beast,so still, it has become the tree.now it''s the tree that prowls over the beast,a cautious beast itself.

a stone thrown at its breastis so fast—the stone has become the beast.now it''s the beast that throws itself like a stone,blood like a dog-rose tree on a windy day,and the moon is trying on your facefor the annual masquerade of the dead.

death decides to wait to hear more.so death mews:first—your story, then—me.

Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus. Her American debut, Factory of Tears, appeared in 2008 and she was featured on the cover of Poets & Writers. She has received many honors and awards, including a Civitella Raineri fellowship. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.