The Black Wall

Laus Strandby Nielsen’s The Black Wall (Den sorte væg) is a collection of subtle poems, embracing a natural musical rhythm without a schematic meter and rhyme. For the first time in the English language this translation of The Black Wall offers to the reader a still picture which ultimately gives way to action and change. Jørgen Veisland, professor of American and Danish literature at the University of Gdańsk, have given these intensely beautiful poems a precise, stringent form. Veisland’s translations are accessible, not making use of esoteric vocabulary or requiring specialist knowledge; and yet they are profoundly rich in potential. These are poems that can be read all at once, or one at the time, such as one would with a good cup of tea.