Niels Hav
You can spend an entire life
in the company of words
not ever finding
the right one.
Just like a wretched fish
wrapped in Hungarian newspapers.
For one thing it is dead,
for another it doesn’t understand
Hungarian.
Niels Hav is a Danish poet and short story writer with awards from The Danish Arts Council. He is the author of six collections of poetry and three books of short fiction. His books have been translated into many languages including English, Arabic, Turkish, Dutch, Farsi, Serbian, Albanian, Kurdish and Portuguese. His second English poetry collection, We Are Here, was published by Book Thug in Toronto; his poems and stories have been published in a large number of magazines and newspapers in different countries of the world, including The Literary Review, Ecotone, Exile, The Los Angeles Review, Absinthe: New European Writing, Shearsman and PRISM International. He has travelled widely and participated in numerous international poetry festivals in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. He has frequently been interviewed by the media.
Niels Hav was raised on a farm in western Denmark, today he resides in the most colourful and multiethnic part of the capital, Copenhagen.
“…Niels Hav’s We Are Here, … brings to us a selection from the works of one of Denmark’s most talented living poets and is all the more welcome for that reason….”
Frank Hugus, The Literary Review
