A symposium of contemporary Nordic poetry with nineteen papers by French and Nordic scholars.

The vitality of Nordic poetry is quite evident today. Major figures such as Inger Christensen and Tomas Tranströmer have been translated all over the world and are among the latest icons of the genre. Others, such as Sjón, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, and the 2023 Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, may be known mostly as practitioners of other genres, but they are also, if not primarily, poets, this aspect of their work gradually benefiting from the success of their song lyrics, novels, and plays. The translation and reception of more confidential or experimental poetic practices, often linked to relational networks, confirms the impact of poets from the North in another way. Among many others, poets such as Ann Jäderlund, Cia Rinne, Jørn H. Sværen and Pia Tafdrup have enjoyed an international reputation lately within a specialised community of readers and writers. It seems, however, that the inscription of their writing within a Nordic historicity is only addressed in the vague mode of a geographical origin, and that critics struggle to see a wider constellation of practices, projects, references, traditions and networks behind these few names.

We would like to locate the symposium within this tension, considering Nordic poetry as a field shaped by collective dynamics, but also focusing on singular works in order to examine the contribution they make – not only within their respective fields  but also in a wider context, related to specific modes of circulation and reception on a European or global scale, whose links with the Nordic field remain to be analysed.

• To this end, we propose a reflection along five lines, between which there are possible intersections:
• The Nordic modernist tradition
• The impact of the avant-garde and the legacy of committed poetry
• The importance of the religious material
• The role of the subject of enunciation in the social world
• Modes of production, circulation, and reception