As you can tell from the quotation on the banner of this site, I’m a huge fan of Tomas Transtromer, and have been ever since I stumbled across a selection of his poems in the Cambridge Public Library back in 1989, while looking for a volume of Fernando Pessoa’s poems.
I have written about Transtromer and his work here, and I guess this was just enough of an online presence to be luckily found by James Wine, who has created a beautiful film of Transtromer’s poem “Baltics,” in which the poet reads his own poem in his native tongue and which can be viewed with English subtitles. The link to the film is below—hopefully this method of sharing works; if it does not, I have also linked to it on my Twitter account @jeffschwaner.
Magically enough, the filmmakers once lived very much in this part of the world, outside Front Royal for a few decades before moving to Sweden. So at a time when poets are preparing to gather at Bridgewater for the poetry festival next week, here comes a film of a most moving poem by a Nobel Prize winning writer who, long before he’d won any prizes had already won the hearts of so many readers, in a film created by folks with roots right around the corner. Please check it out, and enjoy.
Translations from the English 