Welcome

Welcome to the Tenth Issue of The Copenhagen Review. Ten, a nice Pythagorean number. It is our custom to allow each issue to remain undisturbed for some time. This affords the reader the time to return to the site again and again, gives the editor a breathing space, allows unexpected things to be added. We provide the option of looking at back issues as well (see above).

We live in strange times, some might say. With great moments that carry with them very definite agendas which encourage us to "change our way of living." Messianic messages assault us every day and we are confronted with a new kind of moralism. What was once permitted and even encouraged (expand your horizons, test your borders) is now seen as debauchery. And storms are in the air.

What we bring here are smaller things. Poems, poetry, some reviews, a story or two, inspired travel, reflections on writers.

Poetry. From California, where Mia Paschal dances and enlarges our ideas of what theater is, she has given us a lovely poem on, yes, love. Ilija Trojanow is a busy man with a full range of writing projects, fiction, non-fiction, debate contributions to the leading German newspapers, poetry. We have selected three poems that are quite different than his normal work. From northern Denmark, Karsten Sand Iversen, Denmark's sovereign translator from at least English, German and Swedish into Danish, has allowed us to publish, in translation to English, his thoughtful essay on Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming), a novel by 2019's Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Austrian Peter Handke. On the opposite end of the production spectrum, we welcome Gloria Bee to the land of writing with her first published poem, a poem full of the right kind of indignation. In German. Another California resident and a regular contributor to TCR is Amy Trussell. Thank you Amy for two fine poems.

Herta Müller has sent us a collage of hers which we gratefully bring. In German.

Marianne Larsen's subtle poetic weavings are difficult to reproduce in English, but we have done our best and thank her for this timely poem. And under the wire, Jon Fosse sends us a poem written, well, now. March 30. We thank him for that. In New Norwegian and English.

Christopher Sand-Iversen has contributed at least two pieces (you never know what will happen between the writing of this Welcome until we go on line), a short story true to our times and an account of a recent journey to a very wet Venice where he was able to experience Larissa Sansour's "Heirloom" at the Biennale. We are grateful to him for both pieces as well and for many other things: his help in the technical and editorial tasks relating to this issue, to mention just two.

Eugenio Barba, of Odin Theatre has sent us a poetic exhortation: The Risk of the Hunter. And from Copenhagen, Inger Barbara C. Christensen has sent us an intimate tale of remembrance.

We thank our readers and their positive response to our efforts to bring good literature in troubled times.

And thanks to Sif, five years old, for our cover.

— The Editor