In Ancient Algorithms, Katrine Øgaard Jensen mistranslates, rewrites, and remixes her award-winning translations of Danish Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s poetry based on a series of self-imposed rules and... Read More
Description
In Ancient Algorithms, Katrine Øgaard Jensen mistranslates, rewrites, and remixes her award-winning translations of Danish Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s poetry based on a series of self-imposed rules and rituals in collaboration with poets Sawako Nakayasu, Aditi Machado, CAConrad, Baba Badji, Paul Cunningham, and Ursula Andkjær Olsen herself. Envisioned as a shared debut, this collection of collaborative poems is equal parts exercise and exorcism, a haunting of literary influences that repositions translation as the very act of writing—exploring what it means for something to be an original, a translation, a poem.
Details
- Price: $17.95
- Pages: 120
- Carton Quantity: 3
- Publisher: Sarabande Books
- Imprint: Sarabande Books
- Publication Date: 30th September 2025
- Trim Size: 6 x 9 in
- ISBN: 9781956046434
- Format: Paperback
- BISACs:
POETRY / European / General
LITERARY COLLECTIONS / European / General
LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Women Authors
POETRY / Women Authors
Reviews
“From the untranslatable poetic (neural) network of a semi-private, collaborative abyss, Katrine Øgaard Jensen’s Ancient Algorithms presents a sensual dyadic union of corporeal binaries and cognitive rhythms, where each fusion of body and word refracts into prismic autonomous realities. From the mucus membrane of prompted parameters and rules to image generators and self-governed translations, Jensen’s experiment astonishes with joyospheric lexical colors, taking us to a place where language transcends ‘twisted chromosomes’ of lyrics to become an embodied, highly emotional, noetic space. Her work, like uranium elves, is both wise and quirky and gorgeous and self-looping. Thus, it extends beyond organic data models and their ‘alchemical will’ while revealing lucent truths, more than capable of erecting a new paradise.”
—Vi Khi Nao, author of War is Not My Mother
“Katrine Øgaard Jensen and her collaborators engage in transritual and transcreation as acts of writing—transwriting. Their varied triggers and processes are spectacular. Ancient Algorithms reveal immense possibilities of language and poetry to become fearless and unbordered.”
—Don Mee Choi, author of Mirror Nation
“The collaborators in this volume embrace the deformation zone of translation, exploring the transformations that take place in translation, and in the process pay the strongest possible homage to Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s classic trilogy. These experiments in volatility may change the way you see not just translation, but writing itself.”
—Johannes Göransson, author of Summer
“Where does influence end and invention begin? Does that ‘cosmic apparatus’ we call a poem function more like a puppet show or, say, VR goggles? When does a poem become so intricately formal that it escapes the tug of ego to attain its own ecstatic logic? In Ancient Algorithms, Katrine Øgaard Jensen creates a maelstrom of wonder and writes from the threshold of that otherworld where order and charisma collapse into one another like once-forbidden lovers.:
—Gregory Pardlo, author of Spectral Evidence
Author Bio
In Ancient Algorithms, Katrine Øgaard Jensen mistranslates, rewrites, and remixes her award-winning translations of Danish Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s poetry based on a series of self-imposed rules and rituals in collaboration with poets Sawako Nakayasu, Aditi Machado, CAConrad, Baba Badji, Paul Cunningham, and Ursula Andkjær Olsen herself. Envisioned as a shared debut, this collection of collaborative poems is equal parts exercise and exorcism, a haunting of literary influences that repositions translation as the very act of writing—exploring what it means for something to be an original, a translation, a poem.
- Price: $17.95
- Pages: 120
- Carton Quantity: 3
- Publisher: Sarabande Books
- Imprint: Sarabande Books
- Publication Date: 30th September 2025
- Trim Size: 6 x 9 in
- ISBN: 9781956046434
- Format: Paperback
- BISACs:
POETRY / European / General
LITERARY COLLECTIONS / European / General
LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Women Authors
POETRY / Women Authors
“From the untranslatable poetic (neural) network of a semi-private, collaborative abyss, Katrine Øgaard Jensen’s Ancient Algorithms presents a sensual dyadic union of corporeal binaries and cognitive rhythms, where each fusion of body and word refracts into prismic autonomous realities. From the mucus membrane of prompted parameters and rules to image generators and self-governed translations, Jensen’s experiment astonishes with joyospheric lexical colors, taking us to a place where language transcends ‘twisted chromosomes’ of lyrics to become an embodied, highly emotional, noetic space. Her work, like uranium elves, is both wise and quirky and gorgeous and self-looping. Thus, it extends beyond organic data models and their ‘alchemical will’ while revealing lucent truths, more than capable of erecting a new paradise.”
—Vi Khi Nao, author of War is Not My Mother
“Katrine Øgaard Jensen and her collaborators engage in transritual and transcreation as acts of writing—transwriting. Their varied triggers and processes are spectacular. Ancient Algorithms reveal immense possibilities of language and poetry to become fearless and unbordered.”
—Don Mee Choi, author of Mirror Nation
“The collaborators in this volume embrace the deformation zone of translation, exploring the transformations that take place in translation, and in the process pay the strongest possible homage to Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s classic trilogy. These experiments in volatility may change the way you see not just translation, but writing itself.”
—Johannes Göransson, author of Summer
“Where does influence end and invention begin? Does that ‘cosmic apparatus’ we call a poem function more like a puppet show or, say, VR goggles? When does a poem become so intricately formal that it escapes the tug of ego to attain its own ecstatic logic? In Ancient Algorithms, Katrine Øgaard Jensen creates a maelstrom of wonder and writes from the threshold of that otherworld where order and charisma collapse into one another like once-forbidden lovers.:
—Gregory Pardlo, author of Spectral Evidence