Collected Poems

Jon Fosse The Nobel Prize

Original title: Dikt i samling
Publisher: Samlaget, 2001
Genre: Poetry

Jon Fosse has time again showed how he masters the art of poetry. Throughout his prolific career, Fosse has written numerous books of poetry, now available in compilations. This edition includes Angel With Watery Eyes, The Movements of the Dog, Dog and Angel, New Poems, and Eyes in Wind.

and again the little boy sings:
if you hear my heart come
then let it leave again:
let the rain rain
let the sun see
let the wind blow
let my heart beat
(Extract from The Movements of the Dog, translate by May-Brit Akerholt)

Foreign rights

Brazilian Portuguese: Fosforo
Chinese (simplified): Horizon Media
Icelandic: Dimma
Italian: Crocetti
Polish: Biuro Literackie
Romanian: Pandora
Serbian: Trecí Trg
Spanish: Sexto Piso

When the four first collections of poems by Jon Fosse are to be seen as one, the images of fjords and mountains are inevitable; the rain, the dark, the shore, the movements of the waves. The same is the connection to long traditions in western literature and philosophy.

Tom Egil Hverven on the beauty of reading Fosse in such collections

Jon Fosse

Photo: Agnete Brun

Nobel Prize-winner Jon Fosse (b. 1959), is widely considered one of the most important writers of our time. For almost forty years, he has written novels, plays, poems, stories, essays, and children’s books. His award-winning work has been translated into more than fifty languages and his plays have been staged over a thousand times all over the world.

Jon Fosse grew up in Strandebarm, a small village in the western part of Norway, he now lives in the Grotten, an honorary residence in Oslo, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.

Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 and has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally through the years.