Iceland review - 2016, Page 17

14 ICELAND REVIEW ICELAND REVIEW 15
Describe your debut poetry
collection. What inspired you
to write it?
The title roughly translates to
“A Consolation for Those Who
Don’t Feel at Home in the Present
Time.” I think of the book as a
collection of singles rather than
a rock-opera: so you never know
what kind of song is going to
come next. Of course, inevitably,
there are some recurring motifs
and images throughout my poems.
They are poems about love and
space, as in the space around us.
It’s funny because I have always
thought of myself as a visual art-
ist who works with text, but it
turns out I’m actually a writer who
works with space.
Which comes more naturally
to you: writing poems or
writing novels?
It just depends on the day, the time
and my surroundings. I like writ-
ing prose because it’s like getting
a train moving—it takes a while to
get rolling, but then, once it starts,
it’s hard to stop it. For me, writing
poems is quick, like setting off a
firework or taking a snapshot. I
seldom rewrite my poems because
I have found that when trying to
rewrite I usually make something
new—and that new text, in turn,
would have to be rewritten. Turns
out rewriting is a vicious circle for
me, so I try to stay away from it.
How do your various careers
in the arts inform one
another?
In a way, I think of my jobs as one
profession, one activity. It’s the act
of living and trying to make some
sense of it. Sometimes I like to
10Q