Walking over the Water: Pia Tafdrup poetry tour

The Poetry Centre is delighted and honoured to coordinate a short tour by internationally-acclaimed Danish poet Pia Tafdrup. The tour, entitled Walking over the Water (which refers to Pia's 1991 essay about her poetic method), is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, and also by the University of Reading and Roehampton Poetry Centre. Pia will visit Reading, Ledbury, and Oxford during her tour, and at each stop will read or be in discussion with a celebrated British poet: Peter Robinson in Reading, Fiona Sampson in Ledbury, and Philip Gross in Oxford.

Pia Tafdrup, one of Scandinavia's best-known poets, was born in Copenhagen in 1952. She is a member of the Danish Academy, and has published 17 collections of poetry, two novels, and two plays. Pia received the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1999 and the Nordic Prize in 2006 from The Swedish Academy. Her most recent poetry collections translated into English are Queen's Gate (Bloodaxe, 2001), Tarkovsky's Horses & Other Poems (Bloodaxe, 2010) and Salamander Sun & Other Poems (Bloodaxe, 2015). Her latest books published in Denmark are entitled The Taste of Steel and The Smell of Snow.

Pia has also published a statement of her poetics entitled Walking over the Water (1991), and edited two poetry anthologies. She has produced literary translations of a number of Swedish writers, including Tua Forsström and Katarina Frostenson, and her own poems have been translated into more than 30 languages in books, anthologies and magazines. English translations of her poems have been published in 60 literary journals in the U.K., U.S., Canada, and Australia.

Pia was the subject of a 2003 documentary film about her work, Thousandborn, directed by Cæcilia Holbek Trier, and she has read from her work in more than 40 countries. She represented Denmark at Poetry Parnassus, the festival of readings, performance and debate that took place during the London 2012 Festival.