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1972 - 2022

I.M. Nils Christian Moe-Repstad

September 19, 2022

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On Sept. 15, Nils Christian Moe-Repstad, one of Norway's most important contemporary poets, passed away at the age of 50. Moe-Repstad was scheduled to perform at the 52nd Poetry International Festival this June, but had to cancel due to his failing health.

Nils Christian Moe-Repstad was an exceptional poet with an entirely unique style and approach. He convincingly showed how poetry can conjure up a world of its own in which present and past, the personal and the universal come together beautifully.

In what we can perhaps call his opus magnum, the monumental, more than seven hundred and fifty-page collection Wunderkammer from 2016, the poet defines and redefines how (the lightness of) the world can be read as a product of history, of the progression of time, as the sum of all kinds of events, processes and analogies. He describes how on an atomic level everything is related to everything else, that from those atoms an immeasurable amount of physical constellations can be formed. He relates reality to its representation in films, literary texts and myths. And to the practice of writing and to how that act guides the understanding of things. Moe-Repstad shows how violence is a factor shaping history, how powers establish and disrupt balances, how the body represents your place in reality and makes your existence a vulnerable presence.

Nils Christian Moe-Repstad made his debut in 1996 with the collection (Now) and went on to steadily compile an impressive body of work. His latest collection Devon was published in early 2022. A Dutch edition of the collections 19 forgiftninger (19 Poisonings) and Wunderkammer was published by Azul Press, both in a translation by Liesbeth Huijer.

Nils Christian Moe-Repstad / poems > 

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