Trekways of the Wind
Poems by Nils Aslak-Valkeapää
Trilogy translated
from the Sami by Lars Nordström, Ralph Salisbury, and Harald
Gaski.
DAT, Norway and the University of Arizona Press, 1994.
Comments on Nils-Aslak
Valkeapää’s TREKWAYS OF THE WIND
Until now the intense,
direct, sudden lyrical poetry of the Sami people (as they prefer
to be called, rather than Lapps), the rich tradition of the yoik,
has been all but unknown to readers of English. The yoiks
have a kinship with the poems of the Inuit, for instance, and
with what we can hear of the nomadic peoples of the Arab world
and the songs of Native Americans. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää was
born into a reindeer-breeding family, trained as a teacher,
became a visual artist. His poems rise directly from the yoik
tradition, at once intimately personal, traditional and
evocative of a huge landscape. Ralph Salisbury, Lars Nordström
and Harald Gaski have done us a service in bringing these poems
and these qualities of them into English.
W.S. Merwin, poet and translator
Lars Nordström, Swedish and
fluent in Norwegian and English; Ralph Salisbury, a Native
American poet; and Harald Gaski, a Sami raised among the
reindeer herds and become a leading scholar of Sami literature,
make a good team. Their translation of Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s
TREKWAYS OF THE WIND brings the essence of this significant book
to readers of English.
Jim Barnes, poet, Professor of Comparative Literature,
and Editor of CHARITON REVIEW
The long-awaited English translation of Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s
first three books of poetry and drawings presents a vivid look
into the mind and heart of Sapmi’s first artist to gain
international recognition. ... Clear, uncluttered statements
offer praise of nature, social commentary, political protest,
love of Sapmi, love of lovers, homage to the old gods, accounts
of visits to native peoples of Greenland and North America.
Sometimes the words are printed on the drawings, sometimes the
drawings lie in between sections of text, complementing and
extending it. In the poems as in the drawings, one topic flows
into another. ...
Nature--birds, hills, reindeer, people--populate the
poems and the pictures. Some of the poems are naturalistic;
vivid depictions of reindeer and mountains, dancers and
drummers. Some images are highly stylized, inspired by the
images from the noaidde’s Drum. The poems,
appropriately enough, also range from naturalistic descriptions
of the everyday world to references to to the old gods and
Spirits that the Drum figuresreprensent.
Donna Palomaki, from a review in BAIKI, Issue 11, Summer
Solstice 1994.