Translator of Faroese poetry featured in American Scandinavian Review

The new edition of the American Scandinavian Review from the American-Scandinavian Foundation in New York has a feature about Randi Ward and her translation of Kim Simonsen's poetry.

Randi Ward is the winner of ASF’s Nadia Christensen Translation Prize for her translation of Faroese poet and writer Kim Simonsen's poetry collection "What god does it do for a person to wake up one morning this side of the new millennium".

Ward has translated poetry since she was 16 years old and has honed translation skills further while studying at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and later earned an M.A. in cultural studies from the University of the Faroe Islands. Ward is the only translator to win the prize for translating literary works from the Faroese language. “The collection simulates the existential struggles we all face, and it also exposes how our perceptions and understanding of self, our ways of thinking and making knowledge, are constructs that often estrange us from the world, each other, and our own materiality.” Ward says about Kim Simonsen’s poetry collection.

“What god does it do for a person to wake up one morning this side of the new millennium" was originally published in 2013, it is published in Macedonia, will be published in Danish Vild Maskine in May and the rights have been sold to American publisher Deep Vellum to be published in 2024.

Photo: Perry Bennet