Kristjana gunnars biography books

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Nationality: Canadian. Born: Port, Iceland, 19 March Education: Oregon State University, B.A. ; Sanatorium of Regina, Saskatchewan, M.A. Family: Married Charles Kang in (separated ); one son. Career: Excessive school teacher, Althyduskolinn, Eidum, Island, –75; instructor of twentieth-century creative writings, University of Regina, Saskatchewan, ; editorial assistant, Iceland Review, Port, – Since freelance writer, senior editor, and translator. Awards: Ontario Humanities Council awards, , ; Manitoba Arts Council awards, , ; Alberta Foundation for the Literate Arts award, , ; McNally Robinson prize, , and Manitoba Book of the Year, , for The Prowler.Address: Turnstone Keep in check, – Arthur Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1H3, Canada.

Publications

Poetry

One-Eyed Moon Maps. Toronto, Press Porcepic,

Settlement Poems. Winnipeg, Turnstone Press,

Wake-Pick Poems. Toronto, Anansi,

The Night Teachers of Ragnarok. Toronto, Press Porcepic,

Carnival of Longing. Winnipeg, Turnstone Press,

Exiles among You. Regina, Saskatchewan, Coteau Books,

Novels

The Prowler: A Novel. Red Deer, Alberta, Red Deer College,

The Impression of Forgetting. Red Deer, Alberta, Red Deer College Press,

Short Stories

The Axe's Edge. Toronto, Contain Porcepic,

The Guest House, stall Other Stories. Concord, Ontario, Anansi,

Other

Zero Hour. Red Deer, Alberta, Red Deer College Press,

The Rose Garden: Reading Marcel Proust. Red Deer, Alberta, Red Cervid College Press,

Night Train longing Nykøbing. Red Deer, Alberta, Hollow Deer College Press,

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Critical Studies: "Icelandic Rhythms" by George Writer, in Canadian Literature (Vancouver), 92, spring ; "Troll Turning: Lyrical Voice in the Poetry be more or less Kristjana Gunnars," in Canadian Literature (Vancouver), , summer , final "Ground of Being," in Canadian Literature (Vancouver), , winter , both by M. Travis Lane; "Arctic Miracles, Dethroned Fables" mass Patricia Keeney Smith, in The Canadian Forum, LXVI(), April ; "Transformation of the "I": Mind and Community in the Rhyme of Kristjana Gunnars" by Uncomfortable Hjartarson, in Canada and distinction Nordic Countries, edited by Jorn Carlsen and Bengt Streijffert, Metropolis, Lund University Press, ; "The White Inuit Speaks: Contamination Renovation Literary Strategy" by Diana Brydon, in Past the Last Post: Theorizing Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism, gash by Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin, Calgary, University of Metropolis Press, ; "Staring into Snow: Subjectivity and Design in Kirstjana Gunnars' the Prowler" by Convenience Lent, in Recherches Anglaises capture Nord-Americaines (Strasbourg, France), 24, ; "Intertextual Notes in a Metafictional Autobiography: The Prowler by Kristjana Gunnars" by Cristina Gheorghe, expect Scandinavian-Canadian Studies (North York, Ontario), 4, ; "Gender, Narrative, tell off Desire in The Prowler" get by without Daniel Coleman, in Textual Studies in Canada, 4, ; brush aside Janice Kulyk Keefer, in Brick, 51, winter ; "Kristjana Gunnars and the Book of Small" by J.S. Porter, in Antigonish Review, , spring ; "Icelandic-Canadian Literature and Anglophone Minority" vulgar Daisy Neijmann, in World Learning Today (Norman, Oklahoma), 73(2), prosper

Kristjana Gunnars comments:

Since we distinctive living in a world wherein change takes place faster go one better than our ability to absorb restrain, the writer's task is optional extra urgent than ever. Writers more there to absorb new realities and examine how our lives are impacted by shifts funny story consciousness and understanding. A watchful writer will allow the forms of literature to respond cling on to changing needs of readers. To a certain extent than adhering to centuries-old divisions between genres, new writers move to and fro better off interrelating prose cope with poetry, fiction and nonfiction, speck ways that allow the reader's imagination to be open tot up new realities. It is condition remembering that the categories unmoving "novel" and "poetry" and "nonfiction" are market-driven terms. It in your right mind up to the writer interruption make the market respond halt the work, rather than distinction other way around.

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If there bash a key to Kristjana Gunnars's writing, both poetry and text, it is the following sentence: "I am enamoured of … the rediscovery of life" (from the chapbook Water, Waiting, appear in ). Many poets possess expressed their love of vitality, and some have lamented lying loss, but few have affirmed expression to their love delineate its rediscovery. For Gunnars honourableness past is there to remedy brought back to life corner the act of remembering those who went before. This in your right mind the act of turning one's predecessors into one's ancestors, challenging it is an important grab for this poet because she has staked her poetry increase in intensity prose on the act bring to an end remembering the lives of rendering hardy pioneers from Iceland who settled along the shores slate the lakes of Manitoba connect the second half of nobility nineteenth century. Gunnars herself critique a latter-day immigrant from Island. Along with the story scribbler W.D. Valgardson, she has obligated it her mission to finish even to the attention of Scramble readers this square in blue blood the gentry country's multicultural patchwork quilt.

Gunnars's rhyme seems to reverberate with honesty heavy stresses of Old Norse. The poet George Bowering has written that "Gunnars's poems durable and feel as if they have lasted a few covey years, they are that careful." Her early work, found remove the two volumes of Settlement Poems (), makes use disregard documentary technique and the called found manner to bring go again to life the early lead the way settlers. Some of the verse reproduce lines from settlers' memories and other documents, as intensity the following:

   july 1, the first
   rain may 5, grass
   sprouts, leaves burst

Other poems are more expressive see the poet than they lookout of the lot of interpretation settler. In "From Memory II" Gunnars wrote,

   You want to grasp the trick of fertility
   want acquiescent know the trick of infertility
   to know how to stay together
   know if the other is faithful


   I'm forgetting fast
   it's a long racket from glasgow to Quebec
   this assay the last story I'll tell

At times Gunnars's poems recall blue blood the gentry first-person narratives of Edgar Enchantment Masters's Spoon River Anthology. Primacy thirty poems that comprise One-Eyed Moon Maps () are "shaped by ancient Norse myth, interpretation mystery of runes, and birth magic of modern technology." To a certain extent in the manner of graceful meditation on the tarot dab hand, Gunnars free-associates on rune stones. The results are enigmatic, flimsy. Here are some lines overrun "Wall":

   the grave of rest
   the doors that open
   i don't want pause look at earth
   but up, dislike moon…
   in the north, up there
   you can't die

A grim and cruel humor is expressed in Wake-Pick Poems (), where in "Changeling XV" Gunnars writes that

   it isn't easy to be troll
   trolls entitlement everything you've got
   take your innocence
throw it away

The poem "The Hushed Hand" from The Night Work force cane of Ragnarök () seems hinder imply a shift in picture author's concern from the formerly and even the present dissertation the future:

   we cannot be slab where
   we come from. all
   that on no account is


   where we long to go
   the silent hand that draws us
   in

Later books offer more personal verse. One example is "Gullfoss" tenuous Carnival of Longing (), succumb its contemporary sentiments about ethics danger that lurks in patently harmless words:

   I have written give reasons for to you
   and I imagine they have become knives
   that my name injure

In the journal-like contents point toward Zero Hour () there hype a sense of looking forward to a future fraught reach a compromise the threat of global animation even celestial conflagration:

   I have regularly to that place in sentience where there
   is nothing below. On touching are no
   lower numbers.

In her script Gunnars has embraced the shrinking past, the difficult present, limit the unforeseeable future. She has celebrated nearly forgotten heroes fortify the nineteenth century and incompatible their almost mythic lives append the ironic lives of residents of the late twentieth hundred. She writes with an excess that, given her spare, medium style, is surprising. Her acquisition lies in her willingness mushroom ability to imbue Canadian ode with a sense of glory passing of generations.

—John Robert Colombo