kelly nelson /TRANSTRÖMER ERASURES WITH TRANSLATIONS

Image by Richard Selesnick and Nicholas Kahn.

A Winter Night

Stormen
huset  sover                                      the house sleeps
stormens

stora barnet

Båda lampor
Båda språket

Stormen
händer men Över
tomma                                               empty

Erasure with translation of “En vinternatt” by Tomas Tranströmer from The Deleted World (1962).

Like Being a Child

barn säckens
skymtar                                             bodeful

gnola                                                  hum
förolämpningen

torso
skimrande över

myllrar ljudlöst                                 bristling without a sound
förmörkar

Erasure with translation of “Som Att Vara Barn” by Tomas Tranströmer from The Sorrow Gondola (1997).


Kelly Nelson is the author of the chapbooks Rivers I Don’t Live By (Concrete Wolf, 2014) and Who Was I to Say I Was Alive (Minerva Rising, 2015). Her cross-language erasures have also appeared in Jet Fuel Review, Quarter After Eight, Hinchas de Poesia, Best Experimental Writing (BAX), and elsewhere. She teaches Interdisciplinary Studies at Arizona State University. More at kelly-nelson.com.