Since 1981, when a hole was made in the writing angel, Pia Tafdrup´s volumes of poems have constituted a poetical chart of the body. In addition to the nine volumes so far, Tafdrup has written two plays, but she is first and foremost a poet. Her poetics, Over vandet går jeg. Skitse til en poetik (Over the Waters I Walk. An Outline Poetics) from 1991, is also about lyric poetry.
In the early volumes of poems, desire and sex are at the centre, and the lyrical tone is sensual and erotic. As part of the poet´s existential project of exploration, the area covered by her has since gradually been extended to encompass nature, the city, alienation and "the Other", which is somewhere beyond the self and in certain places tentatively actually designated God. The latest volume of poems, Dronningeporten (The Queen´s Gate) from 1998, which has water as the dominant metaphor, explores the depths of the body and the soul in water, while through the optics of woman and water the poems produce no less than a modern world myth.
There is thus a constant expansion in Tafdrup´s poetry from the exploration of the innermost zone of the self to poems transcending the purely subjective sphere of experience. This is effected by introducing extensive mythical and historical material, while there is a continuous dialogue with the artistic products - whether architecture, visual art, music or literature - of both past and present. The gradual expansion of the areas from which the material is derived also inevitably leads to constant renewal of idiom.
Not least in Territorialsang (Territorial Song) from 1994, the perspective has been radically extended. Here, impelled by the urge intoned in the 1992 Krystalskoven (The Crystal Forest) to confront her hitherto partially repressed Jewish ancestry, Tafdrup immerses herself in the topography, mythology and history of Jerusalem. It is a journey in search of home. In the midst of all its conflicts, Jerusalem becomes the place of memory, hope and fulfilment.
Ever more insistently in this oeuvre, memory plays the role of a kind of keyhole to the formation of an identity, with poetry, thanks to its cognitional nature, as the key fulfilling the past and giving birth to the self in the present and the future. By on the one hand projecting the bridge of seconds into the future - rather than pausing at a single image of the present - and on the other hand focussing on the past and memory as a creative force, Tafdrup drags the ephemeral present out of an undifferentiated void, thereby creating continuity and significance.
Tafdrup´s poems have an unmistakable tone of their own, but at the same time they are as varied as their subjects. Sometimes as clear as crystal, sometimes as dense and impenetrable as a mystery. For the poems throw light not only on the simple aspects but equally on the mystery of existence. Tafdrup´s world is neither a bed of roses nor of thorns. She introduces no mendacious harmonies, and no false syntheses. But on the other hand, the self is not in melancholy fashion excluded from the world, Desire and death are inter-related in Tafdrup, just as departure and a new beginning are preconditions for each other. This insight provides fuel for the poetry and for the intensified sense of life which the poems radiate. Sensing and reflection stimulate each other, thought is not the cross borne by the body.
Tafdrup´s poetry is meticulously composed from first to last; throughout the entire lyrical project there are threads woven together into an increasingly rich tapestry, which like a frieze of life reveals a lyrical personality´s original poetical images which hypersensitively and unfearingly enter into a confrontation with life, death, eroticism, metaphysics. And alongside the essential themes of this oeuvre, Tafdrup - like her contemporaries - brings a high degree of metalinguistic awareness into play. This expresses itself in the poetry itself, but it is also consistently employed and implemented in the consideration of poetic practice in the book on poetics.
For Tafdrup, art and existence are closely related. Language is a place for coming into being. The poems break down the monstrous barrier between subject and the world by insisting on moments of insight, clarity and presence, here and now. Threads running through life are woven in Tafdrup´s poetical workshop.
In 1999, Pia Tafdrup received the Nordic Council Literature Prize for Dronningeporten (The Queen’s Gate). In the spring of 2004 Pia Tafdrup made her debut as a novelist with the book Hengivelsen (The Submission) for which she received much acclaim.
