Posy (poem): Daniel Gustafsson

up speaking different languages, you always have that multiplicity; there’s not just one way of saying things.’ She feels strongly that every language has its own way of seeing the world, and in this book she deliberately sets out to demonstrate some of the ways in which Swedish does it. She hopes that also people who are not bilingual might enjoy some of the benefits by just having their eyes opened to ways another language expresses things.

Do you have experience of bilingualism? How does it compare with Brita’s? Have you got views on the subject?

Please share your thoughts with us! Advantages, problems, memories, anecdotes — anything that occurs to you.

Dr Daniel Gustafsson is a bilingual Swedish-English writer who recently gave a poetry reading to members of the York Anglo-Scandinavian Society. He has published books of poetry in both languages. He draws inspiration from his Viking ancestry, and he delights in Scandinavian ‘becks’ and ‘tarns’ in the Yorkshire landscape.

On the whole Daniel keeps his two languages separate, though occasionally he allows odd words from the other language to creep in, as in ‘Posy’, written after a walk with his English wife, gathering wild flowers in Sweden.

POSY

Picked in the glare and the gusts of the roadside, poised now like paints on a palette. No less alive for their stillness, no less themselves in this new composition, sunlight still stalks them inside. Later leafing through the flora, training lips to frame the forms of unfamiliar names — rödklöver, stjärnflocka, ängsskärra, blåklocka — something is gained in translation.

Even at dawn undiminished, each petal yet more defined now, each line distinct as if carved out of time.

Fordings 2020