Join us for a virtual book talk with Norwegian poet Kristin Berget on when the light comes it will be so fantastic, with translator and poet Kathleen Maris Paltrineri. They’ll discuss the 2017 Brage Prize-nominated poetry collection, now out in translation from Northwestern University Press, with moderator Marisa Siegel (Fixed Stars, 2022).
and when the light comes it will be so fantastic weaves together themes of ecological and linguistic loss, memory and deep time, and motherhood and grief. Berget’s poetics point to landscapes used as sites of extraction, where exhausted phosphorus, starving clay layers, and forest machines are encountered. The poems in this collection traverse forests, deserts, and seas—their poetic matter separated by fields of caesuras, visual absences suggestive of Earth’s ongoing extinctions. As jurors of the Brage Prize commented, within these pages is a universe where humans can seldom be separated from one another or from the nature they live in and among. Berget’s first book translated into English is an innovative exploration of the climate crises we are living with today and the complex emotions that ebb and flow along with it.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Kristin Berget made her poetry debut in 2007 with loosing louise. She has since published six poetry collections as well as the novel Sonja Sacre Cæur. She is the recipient of the Triztan Vindtorn Poetry Prize, the Stig Sæterbakken Memorial Prize, and the Tanum Women’s Scholarship. Berget’s poetry has been translated into several languages. This is her first collection translated into English.
Kathleen Maris Paltrineri is a poet and translator from Iowa. Her translation of Norwegian poet Kristin Berget’s and when the light comes it will be so fantastic (Northwestern University Press, 2025) was supported by a Stanley Award for International Research. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Norway, she has taught Literary Translation, Creative Writing, and Literature at the University of Iowa. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Marisa Siegel is the author of the chapbook Fixed Stars (Burrow Press, 2022) and her essay “Inherited Anger” appears in the acclaimed anthology Burn It Down (Seal Press, 2019). She is senior acquiring editor for trade at Northwestern University Press, and editor-at-large for The Rumpus.