Published in 2015, ‘Songs and formulas’ (Swedish: ‘Sånger och formler‘) is a collection of poems by the Swedish author Katarina Frostenson that won the ‘Nordic Council Literature Prize‘ in 2016. Born in 1953, Frostenson lives in Stockholm: she is a poet, prose writer, playwright, and translator, and since 1992 she has occupied ‘chair number 18’ of the Swedish Academy. Katarina Frostenson made her debut in 1978 with the poetry collection ‘I mellan’ (in English “In between”): since then she has published numerous collections of poetry, prose, translations, and essays. She has long been one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Swedish poetry. ‘Sånger och formler‘ (in English: ‘Songs and formulae’) is Katarina Frostenson’s latest poetry collection: the poems touch on the death of loved ones, environmental degradation, cultural decline and historical figures such as Marina Tsvetajeva and Elsa Brändström. The language assumes shape and body through the way Frostenson uses words, looking for meanings and connotations as if the words and their ambiguity embody all the mystery of the world and of life itself: readers quickly find themselves caught up in a story about life’s most physical and spiritual visions. According to the Adjudicating Committee, the winner of the ‘Nordic Council Literature Prize’ 2016 has a long and complex lyrical oeuvre behind her. In this web of the contemporary and the mythological, of perspectives both local and global, and of the tangible everyday and travels through memories, literature and songs, she has achieved a cohesion crystallised through her keen focus on the details. Katarina Frostenson’s collection of poems “Sånger och formler” is a story of life’s physical and spiritual revelations, about the little things and the big things, and about humanity in the world. In her poetry, apparently tight, yet actually very spacious, there are constant transformations portraying life’s multifaceted oddity.
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