Humans
- Katrin Ottarsdóttir (author, artist)
- Matthew Landrum (translator)
- Sámal Soll (translator)
- Zoe Guttenplan (artist)
ISBN
978-1-946031-59-4
LCCN
2019947984
Page count
106
Keywords
Poetry, Translation, Language, Archive, Mental Health, Suicide, Drugs, Addiction, Abuse, Death, Family, Mother, Autobiography
Publication date
2020
Language(s)
English, Faroese
Publication media type
Print Document
Translation
Dual-Language
Publication series
Glossarium: Unsilenced Texts
Are There Copper Pipes In Heaven
[A Glossarium / Unsilenced Texts & Projects Dual-Language Faroese-English Translation]
Faroese is a traditionally repressed language, though it has made great strides since gaining semi-autonomy from Denmark after WWII. For several decades, Katrin Ottarsdóttir — a pioneer in Faroese filmmaking and poet — has been making work across disciplines, committed to breaking this silence in defiance of the secretive culture in the Faroe Islands that demands it.
Ottarsdóttir’s groundbreaking, award-winning 1999 film, Bye, Bye, Bluebird, was the first feature film made in the Faroese language; to date she has made several documentaries, shorts etc., as well as two more award-winning feature films: Atlantic Rhapsody (1989) and Ludo (2014). Ottarsdóttir has since gone on to write two books of poetry. The first, now forthcoming from the Operating System in a rare dual-language translation including the Faroese, is Are there Copper Pipes in Heaven, an autobiographical account of her abusive mother’s drug use and eventual suicide. This book was the first Faroese collection of confessional poetry and was highly controversial in a society that does not make public such personal topics, yet despite this it was awarded the Faroese Litterature Award in 2013. (Her film, Ludo, explores the same material.) In 2015, Ottarsdóttir published the poetry collection Mass For A Film, and in 2016 a collection of short stories, After Before.
About the Contributor(s)
Katrin Ottarsdóttir is a pioneer in Faroese filmmaking and has made several feature films, documentaries, shorts etc., e.g. the award winning feature films Atlantic Rhapsody (1989), Bye Bye Blue Bird (1999), and LUDO (2014). Born 1957 in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, she studied film directing at the National Danish Film School. She debuted as a writer in 2012 with the poetry collection Are There Copper Pipes In Heaven (awarded the Faroese Literature Award 2013). In 2015 she published the poetry collection Mass For A Film, and in 2016 a collection of short stories, AFTER BEFORE.
Matthew Landrum is the author of Berlin Poems (A Midsummer Night's Press). His translations from Faroese have recently appeared in Asymptote Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Image, and Modern Poetry in Translation. He lives in Detroit.
Sámal Soll is a Faroese writer and translator. His short story collection Glasbúrið was published in 2015. He has an MA degree in English Language and Literature from Aalborg University in Denmark and has just completed a degree in Faroese Language at the Faroese University in the Faroe Islands. He is currently working on a translation of Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time. You can read more about his work at www.samalsoll.wordpress.com.
