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A Sudden Sky is a book of northern poems with crystalline images and lines, fragile graceful poems that speak of fragments, of the moment between open and closed eyes, of the human need for embrace. These poems note the spaces between things—always a gap, a failed connection, like radio waves caught in the sky.
"I REFUSE to accept
the spine's dictated script
which at the precise moment
lets itself dissolve, lets itself be inserted
as a footnote of terror in the great law
that has condemned us to carry
the quake's loosening when the alibi doesn't hold
and the body surrenders itself
when dawn cleans up
among the stars"
Gernes has called poetry "a resistance movement", explaining "A poem gives us the possibility of hearing our own voices. While the media offer us the world in small pieces, which are experienced as chaos, poetry seeks connections".
Ulrikka S. Gernes was born in Sweden to Danish parents and spent most of her childhood in Sweden. She has travelled extensively in Europe and Asia and now lives in Copenhagen. Her work has been highly acclaimed in Denmark since the publication of her first collection Natsvaermer (Moth) in 1984 when she was 18. She has published eight further collections. A Sudden Sky is a representative selection of her work, chosen by the author with the translators, Patrick Friesen and Per Brask. A Sudden Sky is Brick Books' second translation.