And When the Light Comes It Will Be So Fantastic

Kristin Berget made her poetry debut in 2007 with loosing louise. The author of seven poetry collections in Norwegian, as well as the novel Sonja Sacre CŒur, she has been nominated for numerous literary awards, including the Brage Prize in 2017. Kathleen Maris Paltrineri is a poet-translator from Iowa and the recipient of a 2021–22 Fulbright fellowship to Norway for translation research. For her own poetry, Paltrineri has received scholarships and residencies from USF Verftet, Arctic Circle Residency, and more. Paltrineri’s poems have recently appeared in Bone Bouquet, Bennington Review, CALYX, and jubilat.

• PoemsTranslator’s NoteAcknowledgments

“Aesthetically and philosophically compelling, this poetry is stimulating, sonically rich, and semantically complex. Berget offers room for a persuasive and leavening tenderness that speaks to the wider vulnerability of all life, doing so in a way that never strikes this reader as naive or avoidant. Heart wrenching and yet unstinting, this book offers a good example of what Ray Brassier calls ‘the annihilating positivity of reason’ in the face of life’s inevitable extinction. Kathleen Maris Paltrinieri’s remarkable translation is as inventive, harrowing, and uplifting as the original.” —Gabriel Gudding, author of Literature for Nonhumans