Virgula
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Sasja Janssen (trans. Michele Hutchison)
‘Virgula’, the Latin word for a comma, is what moves thoughts and languages forward and what stops the stillness. In Sasja Janssen’s award-winning collection, the comma becomes much more than a punctuation mark. Virgula is invoked as a muse and a companion; she is called on in every poem, as if she were a goddess, friend or lover, someone who offers space when the emptiness becomes too heavy.
Winner of the Awater Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Ida Gerhardt Poetry Prize, the Herman de Coninck Prize and De Grote Poëzieprijs.
‘This book is stunning. Totally wild.’ – Jack Underwood
Description
‘Virgula’, the Latin word for a comma, is what moves thoughts and languages forward and what stops the stillness. In Sasja Janssen’s award-winning collection, the comma becomes much more than a punctuation mark. Virgula is invoked as a muse and a companion; she is called on in every poem, as if she were a goddess, friend or lover, someone who offers space when the emptiness becomes too heavy.
I long for a full stop, but my Virgulas are wary
of employing them,
I press them close as though death were breathing down my neck
Winner of the Awater Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Ida Gerhardt Poetry Prize, the Herman de Coninck Prize and De Grote Poëzieprijs.
‘Sultry, raw and relentless. This intoxicating poetry seizes you with its beautiful, rich images and refuses to let go.’ – Awater Poetry Prize jury
‘Sasja Janssen is a rare writer who understands the inescapability of the micro-violences and violations of the world and how these inhabit our body and thoughts, as well as our most intimate relationships. Virgula – the Latin word for a comma, literally a little twig – allows each feeling and thing to branch into the other, creating a phenomenological poetics. Virgula is filled with moments of elation and enchantment, but without illusion or fake transcendence.’ – Nuzhat Bukhari
‘A collection that seizes and halts as much as it compels, gathers and pitches. To what end? To the next gather and pitch, to the relentless harrying of life, its blurts, burps, desires and quandaries. The novelty of Virgula’s thinking, its wild precision, is a constant revolution. It bubbles and swerves, growing new limbs, continually breaking its own remarkable fever.’ – Jack Underwood
Sasja Janssen is a poet and novelist based in Amsterdam. Her first publications were two novels but since her father’s death she has written mainly poetry. Her poems feature the body in many shapes, from tool to target, from weapon to wound. Virgula (2021) was nominated for five Dutch prizes and awarded the prestigious Awater Poetry Prize. Putting On My Species (2014) was her first collection to be translated into English and was published by Shearsman in 2020. Janssen has performed nationally and internationally, including at festivals in Nicaragua, Medellín, Mexico and Buenos Aires. The poet and critic Piet Gerbrandy wrote of her work, ‘The poet tries desperately to grasp something of the insane world we find ourselves in and in which we have to simply make do, with totally inadequate means.’
Michele Hutchison was born in the UK and has lived in Amsterdam since 2004. She was educated at UEA, Cambridge and Lyon universities. She translates literary fiction and nonfiction, poetry, graphic novels and children’s books. Recent translations include works by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Raoul Deleo, Octavie Wolters, Gerda Blees, and Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, with whom she shared the 2020 International Booker Prize for The Discomfort of Evening. She also co-authored the successful parenting book The Happiest Kids in the World.
Virgula has been generously supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
