nightwork (2022)
Sjón’s book of poetry nightwork is powerful and layered, clear-sighted and dreamlike. His characteristically rich imagery evokes strong emotion and compelling lines of thought on the human creature and the world, myth and everyday reality in dialogue, his use of language unlike anything else.
The work engages the internal as well as the external, light and dark and these visions coming together somewhere at night, at the moment when one’s interiority encounters what one’s eyes glimpse in reality.
nightwork is Sjón’s 13th book of poetry and the writer’s first book of poetry in seven years.
Sjón’s book of poetry
Sjón, from an interview with Jóhannes Ólafsson in the program Víðsjá on the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service:
“There’s a tradition in talking about the night as the time of poetry. It is perhaps at this time that the poet finds the quiet to process everything the world brings them. While the others sleep, the poet is awake listening to their thoughts, all that has accrued over the course of days.