Kingsize

Poetry. Translated from the Danish by Mark Kline. For some time now Mette Moestrup, one of Scandinavia's most important contemporary writers, has been writing an edgy poetry about the body, about being a mother and a lover in Denmark. She is renowned for love verse as uninhibited as it is feminist, and her provocative, mischievous, sexy poetry also happens to be headily intellectual and full of references to anything and everything, from Batman to Rilke. Moestrup holds true to form with this wildly interwoven collection full of word play and formal avant-garde experiments, kitchensinkfuls of references, recurring themes of ethnicity and sexuality, war and violence, sustained motifs, mythical female figures on a sensation-seeking TV talk show. But all of this, and much more, with an unease, an edginess, a vulnerability as political controversies and racism repeatedly appear to question what at first seems playful. It is a work that delights then challenges the delight. KINGSIZE is Mette Moestrup's third and most acclaimed book. It won the Danish Montana Literature Prize for innovative writing.