Autorentext

Mats Söderlund was awarded the Swedish Writers’ Union’s prestigious Catapult Award for best literary debut in 1992, and has since received numerous literary awards and scholarships. He describes himself as “a forester from the north” with deep roots in Nordic folklore and the Northern narrative tradition. He has released eleven collections of poetry, as well as works of fiction and nonfiction. Söderlund holds a Bachelor of Science in Social Work and served as Chairman of the Swedish Writers’ Union between 2005 and 2012.

Klappentext

The English-language debut and foremost work of lauded Nordic poet Mats Söderlund, winner of the 2025 Karin Boye Literary Prize, the 2024 Norrland Literature Prize, and the Swedish Catapult Prize.
In a sweeping but intimate blend of ecopoetry, mythology, and political verse, Eskatos & the Stretched Necks of Stillness communes with Sweden’s primeval woodlands during an age of transformation. These collected poems lead the reader down overgrown paths, beyond the flickering of leaves and lichen, to meet the dead: a troop of scattering spirits that Söderlund sets out to praise, and to mourn. Shining of rain and gnawing of sorrow, cast from stone, frost, surgical nails, and charcoal ash, Söderlund’s hypnotic ode forms a fragile tether to a world and past that threatens to slip through our fingers, and which no generation who seeks to survive can disclaim.