Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark’s leading poets. She has published over 20 books in Danish since her first collection appeared in 1981, including widely admired sequences of themed collections. The latest of these is a series of five books focussing on the human senses, her Senses Quintet (2014-2022), which the critic Carsten Palmer Schale has called ‘a cathedral of the soul’ and ‘the best collection of poems written in Scandinavia in the past 20 years’.
Bloodaxe published David McDuff’s translation of the first two collections in the quintet, The Taste of Steel and The Smell of Snow, in one volume in 2021. This edition brings together his translations of the third, fourth and fifth parts, The Sight of Light, The Sound of Clouds and The Touch of Skin.
All parts of life are mediated through the five senses in the five books, including the way of the world and the losses that people sustain during the course of their lives – the disappearance of friends and family members, but also the erosion of control of one’s own existence. The themes of ecology, war and conflict are never far away, and there is a constant recognition of the circular nature of life, the interplay of the generations.
‘The main theme is of a deeply existential nature. How it is to be in the world. What it's like to use your five senses to perceive, and to some extent, incorporate the world. Through taste, sight, smell, sound and touch. […] It’s no coincidence that touch – the sensation of the skin being touched – is the last in the suite. In Tafdrup's universe, touch is above the other senses. The skin frames the individual and therefore sets a limit to the self from the environment. It is the human conditions of life she has immersed herself in; existence and its more or less concrete forms of appearance. Earth, beach, sea, sky, fire – and human as a function of these elements. Like body, as language, as memory. It is in the meeting, collision and interaction between nature and culture, between discipline and sexuality, between the depths and heights of sensuality and the details of the everyday world.' – Carsten Palmer Schale, Opulens magasin, 2023
Pia Tafdrup’s previous series of themed collections was The Salamander Quartet (2002–2012). Written over ten years, its first two parts were The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky’s Horses, translated by David McDuff and published by Bloodaxe in 2010 as Tarkovsky’s Horses and other poems. This was followed in 2015 by Salamander Sun and other poems, McDuff’s translation of The Migrant Bird’s Compass and Salamander Sun, the third and fourth parts of the quartet. Pia Tafdrup received the 1999 Nordic Council Literature Prize – Scandinavia’s most prestigious literary award – for Queen’s Gate, which was published in David McDuff’s English translation by Bloodaxe in 2001. Also in 2001, she was appointed a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog, and in 2006 she received the Nordic Prize from the Swedish Academy.
Pia Tafdrup was born in 1952 in Copenhagen. She has published over 20 books in Danish since her first collection appeared in 1981, and her work has been translated into many languages. Her fourth collection, Spring Tide, was published in English by Forest in 1989. In 1991 she published a celebrated statement of her poetics, Walking Over Water. She received the 1999 Nordic Council Literature Prize – Scandinavia’s most prestigious literary award – for Queen's Gate, which was published in David McDuff’s English translation by Bloodaxe in 2001. Also in 2001, she was appointed a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog, and in 2006 she received the Nordic Prize from the Swedish Academy.
Most of Pia Tafdrup's poetry collections have been linked by themes, including The Salamander Quartet (2002–2012). Written over ten years, its first two parts were The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky’s Horses, translated by David McDuff and published by Bloodaxe in 2010 as Tarkovsky’s Horses and other poems. This was followed in 2015 by Salamander Sun and other poems, McDuff’s translation of The Migrant Bird’s Compass and Salamander Sun, the third and fourth parts of the quartet. In 2014 she published the first volume in a quintet of books about the five senses, Smagen af stål (The Taste of Steel), which was followed in 2016 by Lugten af sne (The Smell of Snow). These two were brought together by Bloodaxe in one volume in David McDuff's translation in 2021 as The Taste of Steel • The Smell of Snow. The third, fourth and fifth volumes were Synet af lys (2018), Lyden af skyer (2020) and Berøringen af hud (2022), combined in in one volume in David McDuff's translation, The Sight of Light • The Sound of Clouds • The Touch of Skin (Bloodaxe Books, 2025).
