One of Sweden’s most important contemporary poets, Aase Berg is the author of numerous collections of poetry. Berg’s work is known for its dense and speculative imagery, linguistic deformation and play, and gothic or post-human sensibility.
Berg will visit Dansens Hus to present her work and authorship in conversation with playwright and stage art critic Runa Borch Skolseg.
Author portrait: Aase Berg
In connection with the performance Sun Eaters, author Aase Berg will visit Dansens Hus and present her authorship.
''Aase Berg works a wicked necromancy in her poems. Filling each page with fluids and viscera she plunges into the palpable, pulsating center of our psyche—pulling up fistfuls of nightmares at once strange and familiar.''
Black Ocean Publishing House
Choreographer Jassem Hindi will open the conversation to talk about his relationship to Berg's work, and how poetry is a vital part of his dance and choreography. Poems are concrete tools, immersive worlds. They start within the body and appear within the dancers in fragments.
Information:
Date: Sunday 23.02.25
Time: 16:30-18:00
Location: Dansens Hus – The foyer
Bio:
Aase Berg, one of Sweden’s most important contemporary poets, is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Hos rådjur (With Deer, 1997); Mörk materia (Dark Matter, 2000); Forsla fett (Transfer Fat, 2002), which was nominated for Sweden’s Augustpriset; Uppland (2005); and Loss (2007), among others. She is also the author of two books of criticism, a YA novel, and, most recently, the novel Haggan (2019). Poet Johannes Göransson has translated six of Berg’s books into English: Remainland: Selected Poems (2004), With Deer (2009), Transfer Fat (2012), Dark Matter (2013), Hackers (2015), and the essay collection A Tsunami from Solaris (2019), with Joyelle McSweeney. Berg's writings have been translated into numerous other languages.
Berg’s work is known for its dense and speculative imagery, linguistic deformation and play, and gothic or post-human sensibility. Berg describes her first books, which utilized the form of the prose poem, as “waking dreams or hallies [hallucinations],” adding “the things I wanted to show were accompanied by a pounding rhythm. And they were almost sickeningly kitschy. The rhythmic and screamily exaggerated word-images gave birth to the form.” Berg’s later work utilizes shorter lines. She says of her relationship to language, “Language forces one to be a human on conditions one may not enjoy, forces one to accept reason, causality and chronology as main elements, not as choices. Following hand in hand with the surprise at the possibilities of language comes the hatred of language, and the demand for a new, more human language: a language that looks like us, instead of trying to discipline us.”
Berg’s writing on literature and culture has appeared widely in Sweden, and she was awarded the Dagens Nyheter’s Lagercrantzen for her criticism. She is also a recipient of the prestigious Aftonbladets Litteraturpris.