Lotta Lotass

Over the past twenty-five years, Lotta Lotass has cultivated an independent authorship and never shied away from the serious and the sometimes unfashionably pretentious. Her strong integrity is evident both in texts that constantly surprise in terms of their choice of themes and aesthetics, and in publishing formats which show courage and innovation. That’s why it’s fitting that one of this year’s major literary events in Sweden is a seemingly unassuming, grey poetry collection published by a micro-publisher and with something as outdated as historical heroes at its centre: Caesar and Alexander, Ajax and Achilles. 

These four warriors don’t come across as the heroes they have so often been portrayed as. Instead, they’re fractured, uncertain and stuck in a present that has long since been lost to us readers through historiography, fabrication, oblivion and constructed memory.

And yet, they aren’t the real subject of this poetry collection. Lotass isn’t particularly interested in the historical battles evoked by the geographical names Rubicon, Issos and Troy, but rather in questions about transience and eternity, about how history and poetry write the world and at the same time obscure it. Caesar and Alexander don’t know what will happen – but they do care about how history will judge them. In effect, almost perfectly formed verses characterised by an unreasonably falling lilt – reminiscent of epic hexameter – Lotta Lotass portrays the individual as a temporary visitor in a world that remains indifferent to them, no matter their name. Lotass’ poem testifies to the author’s familiarity with all the possibilities of language and contains echoes of a long European poetic tradition: Suddenly it becomes clear how classic stories can still be productive and valid – in ways we never expected.

In Rubicon / Issos / Troja (not translated into English), the reader is transported to places and times in history that, through historiography and a good dose of fictionalisation, have become almost unreal fairy tales: the morning Caesar crosses the Rubicon, Alexander’s battle against the Persians at Issos and the Trojan War which may or may not have happened. The stones of closure emerge as more important than a tradition of historiography as a beloved battle. Even warlords are eventually forgotten. 

Rubicon / Issos / Troja shows Lotta Lotass’ great courage as a poet: She chooses something seemingly worn and looks at it from a completely new and unique perspective. In doing so, she breathes new life into a literary history that badly needs it. This collection is also a testament to a rarely seen lyrical craftsmanship. 

Lotta Lotass (b. 1964) is one of Sweden’s most respected authors. She likes to work across contemporary genre conventions. Common to all her works is the ability to utilise the musical and euphonic potential of language. Lotass made her fiction debut in 2000 with the novel Kallkällan (not translated into English) and has since written several novels, poetry collections, dramas and radio plays; her list of publications includes some forty contributions, not all of them easy to define by genre, some published in beautiful print, others as electronic text. Among her many literary awards are the Samfundet De Nio Special Prize, the Swedish Radio Novel Prize and Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize. In 2006, her novel Skymning: gryning (not translated into English)was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Lotass is also a literary scholar: In 2002 she defended her PhD thesis on Stig Dagerman, and through her work with the website Litteraturbanken she’s worked to make historical Swedish literature widely accessible. She was elected to the Swedish Academy in 2009, but requested and was granted leave when it became possible in 2018.