Announcement of 2022 Homer Medal winner, which will be held in Estonia embassy in Beijing. The winner is the late poet Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021).
Everything is inside out, everything is different –
colourless, nameless, voiceless –
the sky overhead is an axe-blade. No one knows
that what mirrors the stars and the Milky Way is an axe.
Only those who love see, and remain silent
while in the sky the mirror-blade gets loose and falls
through us, a black starry dark
falling through a blacker dark, and nothing can stop it.
It falls no matter how we turn, always,
it hits us and divides head from body.
The sound of the abyss rises like clouds through us.
Twin stars are overhead: one light, one dark.
Everything else is illimitable void and distant,
dust motes whirling through a dark cathedral, everything else
is a black shawl where the fine old fire has written our names too.
Translated by Sam Hamill & Jaan Kaplinski
To find out more about the Homer Medal Booklet click here.
Details of four medal winners from 2017–2020 are available here.
The project is part of the subtheme Sustainability.
Author
European Medal of Poetry and Art – HOMER
The Homer medal was inaugurated in a world congress of writers and artists held in Brussels, September 2015. From 2017, it forms its present presidium. The medal is awarded to outstanding creators in the world of literature and visual arts.
