A Sudden Sky

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”.

Translated by Per Brask and Patrick Friesen.