Seal Mother

The Icelandic poet, Gerður Kristný, has published

four collections of poetry with Arc, of which Seal

Mother is the most recent. Winner of the Icelandic

Women's Literature Prize 2023 and the Icelandic

Booksellers' Prize for Best Poetry book of 2022, Seal

Mother received universal praise upon publication.

This spellbinding sequence of poems tells the story

of the poet's great-great-grandmother, a midwife

who lived on the northernmost coast of Iceland at

the end of the nineteenth century. Drawing on the

classical forms of Icelandic poetry, Kristný paints

clear and simple pictures of the struggle for survival

by the woman and her family in a narrative that is

powerful and timeless.

Her three previous collections, Bloodhoof (2012),

Drápa (2018) and Reykjavík Requiem (2020) have

all appeared from Arc in Rory McTurk's translation.