Kameron Ray Morton reviews
Outgoing Vessel
by Ursula Andkjær Olsen
translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen

Outgoing Vessel, the most recent book-length poem from Danish poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen, is anything but nice. The speaker of these poems is in turns yelling at the reader in all- caps then dropping to a whisper in italicized moments that seek love and serenity. With sections divided by ethereal and ambiguous illustrations, Olsen’s follow-up to her award-winning poem Third Millennium Heart is a striking testament to her talent for bringing her intense and futuristic poetic stories to life. 

From the very beginning, this poem points itself toward hardness. Speaking of perceiving and understanding one’s own emotions, Olsen writes,

i should have worked to compress them further
until they became stone


the hermetically sealed the unreachable
the lost 

it’s time to launch it all

These opening stanzas establish the themes of the work immediately. Controlling emotions, expelling them—these are explored throughout the work, the emotions growing and the expulsion mutating from spaceship launch to the act of giving birth. 

The success of these poems in English is dependent on translator Katrine Øgaard Jensen as she tackles Olsen’s many puns and neologisms. Her translation seeks to retain the jarring, uncanny nature of Olsen’s work, which I believe she has successfully done. 

Olsen’s poetry seeks to create discomfort with beautiful language. To read it is to find oneself drawn into a reality all its own, and to reach the end is bittersweet. Her words warrant revisiting over and over again, as there is always more to discover. 

Ursula Andkjær Olsen has published eight collections of poetry, in addition to one novel and several dramatic works and libretti. She has received various grants and prizes for her work, including the prestigious Montanaprisen award for Det 3. årtusindes hjerte (Third-Millennium Heart).

Katrine Øgaard Jensen is a writer, journalist, and translator from Danish. She received the 2018 National Translation Award in Poetry for her translation of Third Millennium Heart by Ursula Andkjær Jensen and is a recipient of the Danish Artists Foundation’s ‘The Young Artistic Elite’ fellowship. 

Kameron Ray Morton is an MFA candidate in fiction and translation at Columbia University. Their writing has appeared in Eclectica Magazine, Soundings East, and Valparaiso Fiction Review, among others. They are a Senior Prose Editor for Typehouse Magazine. Find them online at KameronRayMorton.com or on Instagram @tallsoyflatwhite.