Signe Gjessing
- Denmark -
Born in 1992, Vesthimmerland, Denmark, now residing in Copenhagen.
Education: Graduate, Vesthimmerlands Gymnasium, 2012. Graduated, Forfatterskolen, 2014.
Awards: Bodil og Jørgen Munch-Christensens Debutantpris (2014), Albert Dams mindelegat (2015),
F.P. Jacs Mindelegat (2018), Morten Nielsens Mindelegat (2023), and Dan Turèll Medaljen (2024).
Inspiration: Arthur Rimbaud, Inger Christensen, Nelly Sachs.
Signe Gjessing's works has been translated and published in numerous languages.
Full list below of all original and translated works below.
"A star nebula arranges a meeting place for all specks of stardust, should they be lost from each other: In Rome, at The Trevi Fountain.
(The Creation starts making a world, that will become important in the work of
improving the living conditions of sunflowers.)"
- from 'The Illumination of Everything'.
Award winning poet Signe Gjessing (b. 1992) is one of both Denmark's as well as Europe's most intriguing poets, weaving a web of mercurial poetry of star spaces, the movements of human spirit, eros, God, Creation, the universe, and much more, focusing on universal themes.
Signe Gjessing exploded onto the Danish poetry scene in 2014- winning the Bodil og Jørgen Munch-Christensens Debutant Award - shooting through the poetry skies like a comet herself. Gjessing cites Arthur Rimbaud, Inger Christensen and Nelly Sachs as some of her sources of inspiration. Known as a unique reader of her works, sometimes incorporating live music, Gjessing has a strong stage presence.
The writing of Signe Gjessing is an exploration of existence itself, illuminated throughout by the richest of unique imagery - exploring both the intimate bodily experience as well as the ethereal spheres, Gjessing's unpredictable and imaginative poems has us enthralled through every day events and objects, biblical history and star spaces far far beyond.
The poems follow their own paths and create their own universes, in their eternal explorations - just like a young Gjessing insisted on doing everything on her own terms; painting huge abstract pictures, playing the piano without sheet music etc.
In Signe Gjessing's most recent poetry collections christianity is an anchor: The push and pull of light and dark, life and death, the body and the boundless cosmos, is found in both 'The Illumination of Everything' (2023), as well as in 'You can just write about the stars yourselves!'(2024)'.
Here, the body melts and blends into stardust, the world, the universe - beyond our logic.
Don't try to guess where Gjessing's poems are going - lie back into her words, let yourself be swept along:
'The sea is rented out to paradise as an airbnb, while we throw ourselves into the waves.
.
Her breath: The stars dig themselves out from under the star space's fence.
.
God butters up a packed lunch full of rhododendron for paradise
before it goes to Eve's.'
- from 'You can just write about the stars yourselves!'(2024)
Signe Gjessing is, in her life as well as in her poetry, drawn to and inspired by Christianity. In her late 20s she converted to Catholicism. In an interview, Gjessing said that this provided her with a focus when her thoughts flow without boundaries. In that same interview, she said:
"Poems are an enormous passion for me. It touches me much deeper than anything else. One of my favourite poets, Nelly Sachs (Germany), writes: 'She does not go wandering/with her trickling mind/she eats the sweet Sunday dessert/and kisses the rock and listens to its blue language'. It's about staying where you are, in your small square flat, but from there reach a unique reality. I profoundly believe this."
- from Weekendavisen, 26.03.2024)
In Gjessing's 'The Illumination of Everything' from 2023, space and sunflower seeds are inextricably connected to the greatness of the universe - the smallest and the largest, the very tangibly sensuous and the entirely incomprehensible. This collection is composed by very short poems, often just one, two, three stanzas, with the last stanza in parentheses - as if a whisper, an afterthought to what was just written:
'A star has a path in the universe named after it after having saved a heart
from drowning in love.
(If the world must be created some time, the un-created will be left behind alone.)
The star space has blissfully forgotten that it's meant to mind our hearts for a couple of hours.
(The world is an opportunity to say hello to the created).
- from 'The Illumination of Everything'.(2023)
Gjessing's latest and seventh collection, 'You can just write about the stars yourselves!'(Gyldendal, 2024) is composed of both poetry and prose. In 2024, Signe Gjessing also won the prestigious Dan Turéll medal.
'You can just write about the stars yourselves!' trumpets its poems and prose in an euphoric and jubilant tone - as in her other works, Signe Gjessing's imagery is rich and unique, as we are invited into a world where the world's spirit comes alive and the universe itself is personified. Crucially, symbols are strewn across all pages - poppies as a symbol of perishable beauty, butterflies portraying change, transformation, and indeed - resurrection.
'And yes, it's my light blue hat paradise has lying in front of it,
when it blossoms in the street.
.
And my skin absorbs God's blue raincoat.'
- from 'You can just write about the stars yourselves!'
Signe Gjessing's poetry aims to illuminate the entire existence of humanity - from the heart beating in the innermost of our bodies to the unknown beyond our bodies and logic. In Gjessing's imagery you sense the connections in glimpses, and absorb the words as much as you read them.
Gjessing's poems are to be understood using your own instincts rather than your analytical mind, to be sensed, drawn in like breaths - this is the gateway to Gjessing's wider and richer worlds, when we move beyond what we know how to process by default.
The expansion of belief, the faith in expanding your mind and world runs through Gjessing's writing.
In Signe Gjessing's own words:
"My poetological thinking centers on eros - to rise from earth in longing and meet God halfway. It's a Greek way of thinking, but it stems from the need to place everything into the room God exists, a penance walk on behalf of modernity. I explored the death of language in 'The Vision and the Friend', where Florian, the young dead (like Danish poet Gustaf Munch-Petersen) represents poetry. That way, poetry itself is transformed into one of the young dead poets. (...) My recent poetry is much like my debut, the difference lies in its liberation from the outer framing of the poems, and the inclusion of the light of God in the lines. As I understand it, Romanticism ends in the dissolution (...). I believe we can return. And that we have to dare claim that God lives within language, as it has sacrificed itself, has walked to the boundaries of humiliation and beyond."
Signe Gjessing, translated published works:
Ut i det o-lösa, Swedish, Modernista, translated by Ann Jäderlund.
Ideala begivenheter, Swedish, Modernista, translated by Helena Boberg.
Tractatus-Philosophico-Poeticus, Swedish, Modernista, translated by Helena Boberg.
Tractatus-Philosophico-Poeticus, English, Lolli Editions, translated by Denise Newman.
Tractatus-Philosophico-Poeticus, German, Matthes und Seitz, translated by Peter Urban-Halle.
Ut i det u-løse/Illuminasjonen av alt, Norwegian, HOF, translated by Silje Linge Haaland.
L’illuminazione di tutto, Italian, Edizioni Kolibris, translated by Bruno Berni.
Tractatus Philosohpico-Poeticus, Finnish, POESIAVIHKOT, translated by Sami Sjöberg.
Signe Gjessing, original works in Danish:
Ud i det u-løse, Gyldendal, 2014.
Blaffende rum nænnende alt, Gyldendal, 2015.
Ideale begivenheder, Gyldendal, 2017.
Synet og Vennen, (prose), Gyldendal, 2018
Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus, Vandkunsten, 2019.
Illuminationen af alt, Gyldendal, 2023.
I kan da også bare skrive om stjernerne!, Gyldendal, 2024.
Poetry
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Excerpt from 'You can just write about the stars yourselves!' / Uddrag fra 'I kan da også bare skrive om stjernerne!'
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Excerpt from The Illumination of Everything / Uddrag fra 'Illuminationen af alt'
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Excerpt from 'ideal events' / Uddrag fra 'ideale begivenheder'