Waitress in Fall: Selected Poems

For over three decades, Kristín Ómarsdóttir's poetry has thrived in the vanguard of Icelandic literature. Waitress in Fall offers anglophone readers the first substantial introduction to her poems, selected and translated by Vala Thorodds. Kristín's work delights in the lush mess of actual life – its hands and fingers, socks, sweat and crockery. At the heart of the work is a domesticity tinged with threat, where images of placid housewifery confront a wildness pulsing below the surface, a womanhood at once natural and supernatural.

About the Author :
Kristín Ómarsdóttir is one of Iceland's most esteemed contemporary authors. She is the author of six novels, seven books of poetry, three books of short stories, and half a dozen plays. Her novels have been translated into many languages including Swedish, French, and English. She has won numerous awards including the DV Cultural Award for Literature, the Icelandic Women's Literature Prize, and the Icelandic national prize for playwright of the year. Kristín has also been nominated four times for the Icelandic Literary Award as well as twice to The Nordic Council Literary Prize. The first book of translations of her poems into English, Waitress in Fall, was co-published by Partus and Carcanet in 2018 and was chosen as one of the best poetry books of the year by The Sunday Times and The White Review. Vala Thorodds is a publisher, editor, and poet, as well as a literary translator from Icelandic to English. Her work is published by The Guardian, Granta, BBC Radio 4, The White Review, PN Review, The Stinging Fly, and in the anthologies New Poetries VII and The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, among others. She is the recipient of an Iowa Arts Fellowship in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.

Review :
'The world is so ready for the phantasmic heft of Kristin Omarsdottir. Her poems are transcribed dreams: too wet to be dirty, and absurdly funny - "in a lightless girlhole" - while deeply serious. Waitress in Fall does it all. Omarsdottir's poems are gigantically passionate, macabre, timely, glorious, and real.' - Eileen Myles; 'A bracing, beautiful book... Omarsdottir excels at creating pleasurable tension. These poems are like "icecold milk", pure yet animal; invigorating to consume.' - Clare Pollard; 'It's a unique volume that presents the reader with a remarkable picture of a poet's career. Kristin's unmistakable voice escorts the reader from early leaps into middle-aged maturity, with lines that trip into one another, passing swiftly from lightness to despair and back again... As the poems drive the reader onward through the decades, passing haunting landscapes, surreal scenes of domestic life and shrines to the physicality of womanhood, there is a sense of rhythm and voice that carries throughout.' - Bjoern Halldorsson, The Reykjavik Grapevine