(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
“I was too young to know that the rivers that swept across the plains were affected by the soil rotation / that it was fossil fuel that kept the wheels running / running. But I learned the signs for the right of way / meeting place, my heart hammered through the hairpin bends in the Trollstigen as I wondered / the enigmatic answer I got from the front about the black line on the sign: Greater danger than mentioned before. "
This is how the poem ends Through a car window. One poem with two wheels. One big and one small. Something that goes around fast, something that goes slower. The current, almost novelty, oil and fossil fuels that keep economic wheels going. And the slow, the doctor, the earth rotation and the laws of nature, and back to the present: the danger of the climate collapse. "Greater danger than mentioned before." Aksane, who goes within a quarter of a poem, also goes from text to text and book to book in Sørheim's authorship. The current, what's going on: the criticism, the cultural journalism, the prose writing. This – the poetry – has a greater radius and somewhat slower speed, but perhaps greater impetus and weight. This year's collection is Sørheim's twelfth since 1974. And it revolves around the theme and motif that he has previously swung by: the river, the river saga, the camp, the morns, the meeting places ... All in the debut collection figure all this concrete. Spruce trees and large heavy rowboats: "At this site spruce trees / and large heavy rowboats determine the speed / the old sleds every day at the farm / in a smooth almost motionless rhythm", writes Sørheim in his debut book Brother. Sister (1974), and already seem to be aware of what goes fast and what goes slower.
But really. In 1974, Sørheim took basic subjects in psychology, writing freelance journalism and tried to get a job as a journalist. He has educated as a teacher and majored in Nordic literature, but sees that he returns to the psychology of poetry. He thinks of himself as influenced by the perceptual psychology of the author. That he presents the reader, with his landscapes, scenes, things and phenomena, to the reader. That the reader gets to "see" the concrete world, and thereby create its own narrative and meaning about the world. But perhaps Sørheim is an unreliable narrator of his own authorship. He also creates and shares a self worth, one that is not there, in your pictures: "hairpin turns" to be judged. Fine road that is close to the legs of a hairpin?
In this poem the river flows into the road. The road goes down to the river. The troll ladder goes down to the river. The magic path swings like a river on a planet with a shorter radius, smaller axis, more frequent rotation than the earth. And similarly, people and landscapes meet in the poetry of Sørheim, which they also do with – especially many female doctors, especially many young people – Norwegian contemporary writers. As in Viktoria Kiellands Pond marsh, Frøydis Solli Simonsens Every morning I crawl up from the sea, and the second part of Eirin Gundersen's debut collection. The troll ladder becomes an underground river, a river that belongs to the elevated one. To poetry, which is the composed and the figure: Sørheim's poem is not just things. This is a regulation of things. And they are offsets of it.
We see, hear, smell, taste, know. What we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, can be the same. But through the sensory organs they become electrical impulses that come to the brain, and in the brain they are interpreted and organized. With each and every one of us, the senses are interpreted differently. A heavy thunder turns into a Boeing 737 in my head, a thunderstorm in another and road work in the third. In Sørheim's poem one gets a picture and sounds, gets a spruce, a river, a magic wand, a cornerstone business, but gets no guidance on what to see or know about what it looks like. Sørheim has studied his perception psychology and brought it into his work as a poet. As he meets young children, he meets order: he lets them come first. What do they want and what do they like? And then he plays, on their premise. Look, hear, smell, know what they are, maybe? Yes, so is my interpretation of what I have the sense of Sørheim's artistry: That he relates to the meaning-making that he does to oak, hazel, Blue Scabiosa, Bornholm, the Moors, Cambrisk time. Registrants that find it. But not controlling. He has to manage and energize himself within the book-book. Between Anna.
Structure. Sørheim was a board member of the Norwegian Writers' Center, co-member of the Swedish Writers' Association's Literary Council, established the very first writers' club in the country (Gyldendal Club, with Dag Larsen) and action groups for several asylum seekers who were to be, or were, sent out of the country. He was the secretary general of Stuntpotane and the world meeting chair for mail meeting with the daughters in the afternoon. In his dictation, the control and structure are there at both micro and macro levels. The macro level is that he collects poems for three years, before laying them out on the floor and looking at what he has. He is looking for ways to divide into five. Always five. Five times seven poems. He has done that in his recent collections. He sees what kind of holiness is going to be, and in this he edits: add something, take something away. Hips, he has the cycles, with a more or less clear structure and theme. IN Agenda (1983) is a structure between theme and theme internalized in the form. This year's collection depicts various human and nature, culture and the globe. It is done with care and respect. He treats words a bit as he treats Blue Scabiosa, octopus and black shelf: He lets them stand, lets them be themselves, and doesn't push them here, not there. He treats the reader a bit as he treats children and children's children: he presents something to them and allows them to come to what he presents. "Let the little children come to me," says a book that often appeared in Sørheim's childhood. "In the beginning it was only air / that tripped lightly over the rocky mountains I say / again, it was just the air and the birdsong," Sørheim writes in the poem "Air". Yes, in the beginning there was more air. The air comes before the word, as the sensation comes before the interpretation, the thought, the language.
