Published in 1971, ‘Sju ord på tunnelbanan’ (‘Seven Words on the Metro’) is a poetry collection novel by Swedish poet Karl Vennberg that won the ‘Nordic Council Literature Prize’ in 1972. Vennberg was also an essayist, translator and critic and, together with Erik Lindegren, he was the leading representative of the 1940s trend in Swedish literature: in his poems, he has expressed modern man’s desperation in the face of the triumph of violence and dictatorship, but on a personal level he also underlined the contrast between the need for faith and the difficulty of accepting it. ‘Sju ord på tunnelbanan’ was published after almost a decade of silence by Vennberg, and it presents poetry of a simpler construction compared to his previous work: images are less grandiose, the approach is more personal. According to the Adjudicating Committee, Vennberg has held an important place in Nordic poetry since the 1940s: with “Sju ord på tunnelbanan” he has summarised and defined the post-war doubts and beliefs, which he brought humanly and politically to life in our own 1970s.
