The Impostor Poets of Iceland Reject the Original Image of the Poet

At Literary Hub, Larissa Kyzer translates a manifesto from "The Imposter Poets of Iceland": Þórdís Helgadóttir, Þóra Hjörleifsdóttir, Sunna Dís Másdóttir, Ragnheiður Harpa Leifsdóttir, Melkorka Ólafsdóttir, and Fríða Ísberg. "The Impostor Poets are a movement; we invite the Impostor to the table, confront her, and encourage others to do the same," they write. More:

We don’t know if it’s specifically linked to gender, but the thing that brought us together in the first place was that we lacked the self-confidence to properly follow through with our writing. To publish without overthinking our manuscripts back into our desk drawers. The name we chose for ourselves, Svikaskáld, Impostor Poets, is a reference to impostor syndrome—the feeling that waits to sneak up on you, that other people will realize you have no idea what you’re doing.

In the beginning, our camaraderie was, more than anything else, a decided fuck you to this insecurity. We wanted to create a communal space in which we couldn’t give two shits about our uncertainties, in which we could allow ourselves to experiment, to make mistakes, to try new things. We present our poems as part of a larger, collective body of work and this anonymity provides us with a real opportunity for growth.

Since the formation of Svikaskáld, we’ve taken this approach in various directions and also interpreted the root word in our name, svik—meaning betrayal, fraud, treachery, trickery, deceit, imposture—in many different ways. Any time we encounter a convention or tendency in society or the literary world, we give ourselves permission to put a question mark next to how things have been done, next to whatever it is that people seem to expect. That’s when, perhaps, we decide to svíkjast: to renege, to shirk, to refuse this precedent, to do things differently. We reject the original image of the poet—the macho master, the lone wolf. We do this by exchanging ideas, by “stealing” from one another, presenting ourselves as a group, sharing recognition, and not worrying about contradicting ourselves or the expectations of others.

Learn more from this collectivity at Lit Hub.