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Consolation | Jul 18 2004

As a form of what she called consolation, my friend Anne sent me some Eastern Greenlandic poems—songs, actually—recorded and translated twenty years by her friend Lawrence Millman. The poems were originally published in 1985 in a book called Smell of Earth and Clay. They are my new favorite poems, and I want everyone to read them. To that end, Lawrence has permitted me to republish them on Oblivio.

Here’s a bit of context first, from Anne:

The arctic is a place which quickly distills people to their most simple components. Life is hard and it is completely dark for five months of the year. Singing these songs keeps people alive. There is one story about a man who, in order to survive, made a knife shape out of his shit, left it in the snow until it hardened, killed one of his dogs with it, made a harness for the others out of its skin, and sledged away to safety. In some places, cannibalism was an uncomfortably accepted fact of life. Now, it is very unusual and illegal according to the government back in toasty warm Denmark. One of the songs addresses this.

Now go read Smell of Earth and Clay.