Guest of the ilb 2007
Marie Lundquist
was born in Jönköping, Sweden in 1950. She studied to be a librarian at
Borås Academy and graduated in 1976 with a thesis on contemporary
Swedish poetry. She then worked as a librarian for fifteen years.
During this time, thanks to a photography course in Denmark, she came
into contact with writers who were interested in her poetry, and this
resulted in her poems first being published in Danish translation.
Lundquist’s first volume of poetry, »Jag går runt och samlar in min
trädgård för natten« (t: I walk around and gather my garden before
night), came out in 1992. The poems straddle the borders of prose and
poetry. They are short texts devoid of line breaks, which present
states of mind and worlds of feeling: individually read, they resemble
momentary snapshots or word games; together, they create a narrative. A
relationship slowly comes to an end. In the same time, the motif of the
absent mother is also present, a theme that resurfaces in the author’s
subsequent work. The early collection was awarded the Poetry Prize by
the journal »Lyrikvännen« and was praised for its economy of language
and stylistic confidence.
Since this time Lundquist has
focused on her writing, establishing herself as a unique voice in
Swedish poetry. In under three years she published three volumes in her
characteristic prose composition, which is already striking in its
graphic forms. The »stanzas« of the poems lie as individual, closed
blocks of text at the top of the pages, and the figures on the jackets
are painstakingly chosen by the author. A preference for the form,
appearance and phonetics of words runs through Lundquist’s work, in
which different genres converge ever more explicitly. In »En fabel
skriven på stenar« (1999; t: A fable written on stones) the author
falls back on traditional poetic forms with line breaks. In later works
her texts get closer to prose. Lundquist’s seventh and most recent
book, »Monolog för en ensam kvinna« (2005; t: Monologue for a lonely
woman), is declared a »story« in its subtitle. It depicts a woman who
looks back on her mother’s suicide and focuses on themes of solitude,
death and loss.
Over the past few years the
author has also written plays for Swedish radio and was awarded the
Literature Prize of the Swedish Drama Association for a piece entitled
»Mammor får inte dö« (2005; t: Mothers should not die). Further honours
include the Literature Prize from the newspaper »VI« and the Swedish
Radio Poetry Prize. Lundquist’s work has been translated into several
languages. The author also works as a cultural journalist and as a
lecturer in creative writing. She currently teaches on the writing
programme at the University of Göteborg. She lives in Stockholm.
© international literature festival berlin
| 
