This week’s installment of Ten Questions features Brynja Hjálmsdóttir and Rachel Britton, the author and translator of A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við, out this Friday from Circumference Books. The poetry collection, originally written in Icelandic, explores the life of one woman who lives in a glass ball that is being shaken by someone else. With a tone that ranges from polite to visceral, the poems consider what womanhood can be like, ultimately landing in an apocalyptic utopia called “The Whore’s City”—a world that is feminist, funny, odd, unpalatable, and satirical. Poet Emily Hunt calls the book “sly, refreshing, and vivid” and says, “I love the way these peculiar and unforgettable poems jump and glide.” Author Aditi Machado adds: “These deeply weird poems have delivered unto me critical knowledge about creatureliness, lust, rejection, dejection, invalidation, i.e. what it is to be of gender or rather to be of an off one.” A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við was nominated for the Maístjarnan Poetry Award. Brynja Hjálmsdóttir is from Reykjavík and is the author of two books of poetry and a novel. Her first book, Okfruman (The Zygote), was awarded Poetry Book of the Year by the Icelandic Booksellers’ Choice Awards and was nominated for the Icelandic Women’s Literary Award. Hjálmsdóttir is also the 2022 recipient of the Ljóðstafur Jóns úr Vör poetry prize, and of the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Encouragement Award. Rachel Britton is a writer and translator from New York and based in Iceland. She holds a BA in English and creative writing from the State University of New York in Geneseo and is pursuing an MA in translation studies at the University of Iceland. She has received support from the Fulbright Commission, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, and the Icelandic Literature Center.
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir and Rachel Britton, the author and the translator of A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við. (Credit: Hjálmsdóttir: Kjartan Hreinsson; Britton: Sean Gunner)
1. How long did it take you to complete work on A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: I’ve not really given this much thought, but the writing process behind this book was probably the fastest of all my pieces. It took a little over a year. I started it in early 2020 while I was also working on a novel and an essay collection. This book was my love affair, cheating on projects I perhaps wasn’t ready for. It snuck up on me, and once I started, it all came pretty fast.
Rachel Britton: I started translating the book immediately after my first read-through. As with Brynja’s first collection Okfruman (The Zygote), which was published by Una Útgáfuhús in 2019, I was completely enthralled by the way she wields the Icelandic language, the striking cinematic imagery, the humor, and her work’s intentional and selective intertextuality. I think I completed the first draft within a couple of months, and then we went through several rounds of revision over the course of a year and a half before the manuscript was ready. The process was beautifully collaborative. I really wanted Brynja to be involved, as much as she wanted to be, so we could determine together how to bring her vision into English.
2. What was the most challenging thing about the project?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: The writing was quite fun and not particularly challenging. At least that’s how I remember it, but it’s been a few years now. The printing process was a small challenge. My publisher was going to print at one location, but that didn’t work out so we had to find another printer in a rush and the publication got delayed slightly. This was terribly stressful, but of course it worked out wonderfully in the end. My energy could probably have been spent better than worrying about silly things.
Rachel Britton: Perhaps the most challenging part of translating A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við was translating the various references to Norse mythology and Icelandic literature so that the meaning would resonate with anglophone readers unfamiliar with those texts. I combed through the Poetic Edda’s “Völuspá” (“The Seeress’ Prophecy”) alongside Brynja’s poems to ensure that I wasn’t missing any references and to fully understand the conversations in which her poems were engaging. The process made me feel like a detective piecing together a mystery.
3. Where, when, and how often do you write or translate?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: I write mostly doing “office hours,” since I have a family, a small child. I don’t work nights or weekends unless I absolutely have to. I write three to five days per week, depending on other jobs or projects. I’m very lucky to have an office in Reykjavík’s oldest neighborhood in an old house that I share with a few lovely friends and colleagues. Most of my work is done there.
Rachel Britton: I’m not as disciplined or routine-oriented when it comes to writing and translating as I’d like to be. One key element, however, is the need for background noise. Most of the time, I write or translate from a coffee shop, which tends only to happen on weekends. However, I may also get the urge to write or translate at home, in which case I typically also make a cup of coffee and have some sort of documentary or reality TV show playing in the background to drown out the silence.
4. What are you reading right now?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: I’m reading The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández, translated into Icelandic by Jón Hallur Stefánsson. Quite an intense read! I have also been slowly going through Grimm Tales for Young and Old, fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, collected by Philip Pullman. I read one story a day, sometimes aloud for my partner. It’s a wonderful collection, full of poetry.
Rachel Britton: I recently finished reading Ædnan (Knopf, 2024) by Linnea Axelsson, translated by Saskia Vogel. It’s a beautiful novel in verse that spans three generations of women in a Sámi family in Sweden, exquisitely translated by expert Vogel. Now I’m reading Brynja’s Icelandic translation of Danish poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s book Mit smykkeskrin, which was translated into English by Katrine Øgaard Jensen and published by Action Books in 2022 as My Jewel Box.
5. Which author writing outside of English, in your opinion, deserves wider recognition?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: If we’re thinking about poetry, I think Kristín Ómarsdóttir is tremendous. She deserves worldwide fame. Then, I think my good friend Fríða Ísberg should be a household name, and she probably will be in the near future. I will also mention Danish writers Olga Ravn and Asta Olivia Nordenhof. Those two will get Nobel Prizes in, like, twenty years.
Rachel Britton: There are many. To name a few: Kristín Svava Tomásdóttir, whose poetry collections Stormwarning (Phoneme Media, 2018) and Herostories (Phoneme Media, 2023) have been translated into English by K.B. Thors; Gyrðir Elíasson is a phenomenal writer, some of whose work has been translated into English by several talented translators; Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, a spectacular poet and performance artist whose collection Forevernoon (Partus Press, 2021) has been translated into English by Vala Thorodds; and so many more.
6. What is one thing that surprised you during the work on A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: As I said before, this project sort of came knocking while I was working on other stuff. So the whole thing was a surprise. A pleasant surprise of course.
Rachel Britton: What surprised me the most about the process of bringing A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við to anglophone readers was just how quickly everything came together. I started to introduce the book to editors and in only a few months, the book went from an unread manuscript, save Brynja and I, to being bound and printed. It still feels like a fever dream.
7. What is one thing that your agent or editor told you during the process of publishing this book that stuck with you?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: My editor, Einar Kári Jóhannesson, is my friend, my psychologist, my personal superstar, being the first and last person to go through my work. Incidentally, A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við did not need a very rigorous editing process, unlike my other books that have sometimes been completely transformed during editing. He says many smart things, so it’s hard to name one, but if I had to it might simply be: “Þetta reddast.” The phrase, synonymous with Icelandic mentality, translates to something like “Things will work out.”
Rachel Britton: Jennifer Kronovet at Circumference Books is a champion of literature in translation. I am so grateful to her for believing in this book from the moment I brought it to her and for the contributions she has made to support translators and promote translated literature. I had completed the translation in its entirety before sending it out into the world and, throughout the process of translation, it was my friend and fellow poet/translator Meg Matich who encouraged me to play while translating, to not be so rigid with the lines and phrases, to trust myself. Whenever translation theory is whirling too aggressively in my head—the fundamental unit of poetry is the line, the fundamental unit of poetry is the word, achieving equivalence—I remind myself that it’s okay to play.
8. What is the biggest impediment to your creative life?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: I am very lucky. I can work as an artist (at least part-time) and would not say I have big or unsurmountable impediments to my creative life. I’ve worked hard to accomplish this, but I want to emphasize that this, indeed, has a whole lot to do with luck, a big coincidence. I was lucky to be born where I was born, where I can receive a stipend to create art, lucky to be raised in a safe middle-class environment. The biggest impediment to creative life on the planet is that many people are not given that chance.
Rachel Britton: Time. There are simply not enough hours in the day for everything I want to do. Most of the time, of course, I’m working my day job, but I also have lots of reading for class, since I’m currently pursuing my master’s degree. I’ve also been trying to get more involved with the literary community in Reykjavík after an extended period of illness earlier this year and traveling to see friends and family abroad. It’s a concerted effort to make time in the schedule for creative work.
9. What forms of work, other than writing, did you have to do to complete this book?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: Reading. This is the obvious answer. No writing gets done without reading.
Rachel Britton: As my first book-length translation, I really gave everything to A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder / Kona lítur við. I’m certainly not fluent in Icelandic by any means, and translating the book was a kind of education for me. It’s a bit of a tangent here, but I think it’s important to offer up the idea of translating as a tool for language-learning. I learned dozens of words and phrases while translating and the early drafts of the book included several mistranslations. When Brynja reviewed my translations, she corrected me, and that action is an important part of language-learning, too—the freedom to make mistakes.
I also did a ton of reading and research. Because the poems are so referential, I wanted to ensure I understood how the poems were using these references and what they meant. I reread the Poetic Edda, Icelandic folktales like “Selhamurinn” (“The Selkie”), Halldór Laxness’ Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier), the Christian Bible’s Book of Revelation, and Svava Jakobsdóttir’s famous novella Leigjandinn (The Lodger), among others. I studied the history of women in Iceland, both before the introduction of Christianity and afterwards, and the continued efforts towards gender equality. Understanding the context in which these poems exist and the conversations they listen and contribute to was absolutely imperative.
10. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: When it comes to writing advice, I’m a firm believer that you can hear a piece of advice a hundred times, but you don’t really take it in unless you find out by experiencing it yourself. Finding out the hard way, through mistakes, seems to be the only way to truly learn.
But if I were to pass along some advice I’ve been given, it would be: No one is anxiously waiting for your book to come out, except you. If it needs time, give it time, and take into account that with writing, time moves slowly. A month is nothing, a year is a short time. If you are serious about your work, it means taking time, sometimes a ridiculously long time, being precise and meticulous. Good stuff needs good time.
Rachel Britton: Like many writers I’ve met over the years, I’ve always struggled with perfectionism that tends to prevent me from letting the words flow out naturally. I pause, I scour dictionaries and thesauruses looking for the most precise word for what I want to express, I delete, I try again, I delete, and by the time I have to finish for the day—because of other commitments—I may have only written a few sentences. So the best advice I’ve received, and the advice that I give to writers with a similar situation, is to force yourself to write without editing yourself. To let the words come out as they will and resist the urge to revise until a later date and time. It’s active work. You must be constantly vigilant and attentive to the temptation. But, when strict with myself about it, I find that this effort is incredibly generative. I let my voice speak without revising myself prematurely. It’s freeing.
