The Biological Composition of a Drop of Seawater is Reminiscent of the Blood in My Veins
AUTHOR
Kim Simonsen
TRANSLATOR
Randi Ward
The biological composition of a drop of seawater is reminiscent of the blood in my veins was written in the wake of the death of Simonsen's father. The narrator of the collection navigates his grief and his conflicted sense of masculinity by wandering about an unidentified Faroese village. A complex temporal understanding ebbs and flows throughout, consistently oscillating between the linear and the cyclical, between life and death, blood and the sea, between biology and philosophy.
Reviews
"Anaximander’s recognition that ‘all that is dying/ returns to the element/ from which it came’ inspires Kim Simonsen’s marvelous book-length meditation on the sea, refracted through the death of his seafaring father. This Faroese poet, curator, and scholar has discovered ingenious means of connecting quotidian details, changes in the weather, and movements of the sea to larger existential matters in a language at once spare and merciless. In the cycles of nature he makes ‘the story about waves and the night.’ The Biological Composition of a Drop of Seawater Is Reminiscent of the Blood in My Veins offers not only a brilliant contribution to the tradition of wisdom literature but a new way to read the land- and seascapes of our lives.”
—Christopher Merrill, author of Flares
Randi Ward is a poet, translator, lyricist, and photographer from West Virginia. Ward has twice won the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Prize, the only times the prize was awarded to literary work translated from the Faroese. Ward’s translations of Faroese poetry have appeared in some of the world’s premier publications showcasing international literature, such as Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Asymptote, and Best Literary Translations 2025. The government of the Faroe Islands honored Ward in 2024 with Heiðursgáva Landsins, a national award for distinguished service to Faroese culture.
Nordic Council Literature Prize nominee Kim Simonsen is a Faroese poet and researcher from the island of Eysturoy. Simonsen has authored seven books, as well as numerous essays and academic articles. In 2014, Simonsen won the national book award of the Faroe Islands, M.A. Jacobsen's Virðisløn, for his poetry collection Hvat hjálpir einum menniskja at vakna ein morgun hesumegin hetta áratúsundið (What good does it do for a person to wake up one morning this side of the new millennium: Deep Vellum Publishing, 2025). His poetry has recently appeared in Columbia Journal, Best Literary Translations 2025, Washington Square Review, Plume, and Notre Dame Review.