Iceland review - 2019, Qupperneq 99

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Iceland Review
lisher can do. “I had noticed that people who were
good at self-promotion and good at getting their
foot in the door were more likely to get published.
I thought that publishing houses should be doing
more to aid people who aren’t as good at that to
get their work out there. It was a little sad to realise
that you can only do so much to help. It’s frus-
trating, but when it comes to promotion, there’s
nothing like a writer who can go out there and get
people interested in their book.”
Weighing words
While the UK market is new territory for Vala, the
Icelandic market has also seen rapid changes since
she first entered it. Most notably, it feels busier.
“I love how much is going on. Meðgönguljóð was
created because there wasn’t anything going on,
except for maybe one poetry reading every six
months.” The social aspect of writing is import-
ant to Vala. “Writing is such an isolating task. It’s
something you can’t really do with others, so it’s
important to have a venue where you can work
together and share ideas. You can’t really sit down
with someone and write a text together, but you
can listen to someone read their work in progress
and you get all these ideas and this feedback. For a
healthy scene, you need this social interaction.”
It’s not just more fun to write together, it also
helps your writing get better by making it easier
to get feedback on works in progress. “There are
so few opportunities in Iceland to share your work
in progress, like publishing a poem in a magazine.
If you want to publish your work, you just have to
publish a book of poetry with 60 poems. It might
take you five years, and in the meantime, you’re
just writing for your desk drawer. In the UK, you’ll
finish a poem and send it to maybe ten magazines
in order to try to get it out there. Then the poem is
already a part of some conversation, already living
in the now. Here, there are so few literary maga-
zines that the only way to have a dialogue, where
you show something that isn’t completely finished
and ready, is in this social setting.”
This year, Partus will be publishing translations
of Icelandic poetry, novels, and even a graphic novel
for UK readers. With more new voices being heard,
over a broadening international territory, the con-
versation is about to get a lot more interesting.
"I wouldn’t
want to be in
publishing to
make money, I
do it because
I believe in
literature and I
believe in the
writers I work
with, and to me,
it’s important
to keep that
going."