19-year-old Aya Kanbar from Örebro has been praised to the skies by a unanimous critical corps for her two poetry collections "Hyperreality" (2021) and "Aftongata" (2023). Aya Kanbar herself is glad for the recognition, but tries to take it with ease.
One must not see reviews as a manual for how to write the next book. It's just about what one has written so far, what happens in the future is only up to oneself, says the poet who will be performing at the Literature Festival at Mårbacka on August 2.
Aya Kanbar's poems are a study in contrasts and throws between extremes. There, "interstellar breezes", death angels, and violent bloodshed coexist as naturally as dingy kebab shops and visits to Ikea.
Diary wasn't enough
The fascination with language possibilities was found already in elementary school.
I've always liked to dive into language, both its history and usage. In school, creative writing was always the most fun, just having to actively look for other words to describe something, she says.
I felt early on when I wanted to describe things that it wasn't enough with a diary. I want to blend a fascination for language and abstract descriptions with concrete documentation. That's what my poetry looks like today too.
Returning to scents
If Aya Kanbar hadn't started writing, she might have invested in a career as a perfumer instead. Scent, or rather perfume, is also something she often returns to in her poems. Like in "Two Thousand and One Nights" from "Aftongata", where the beloved "is all notes in my dream perfume". And she likes to draw parallels between scent and poetry.
Scent is also something abstract and I like that perfumes partly build on notes from nature and that there are synthetic scents that become like the abstract in poetry, that you have to figure out what it smells like yourself, she says and continues:
What I like about perfumes is that they change during the day when you wear them. It's so cool and nice with this transition and constant change. It's a dynamic work of art that you have to actively approach to experience.
In the fall, Aya Kanbar will have several opportunities to dig deeper into language, as she begins the linguistics program in Uppsala. And she already has an idea about the theme for her next poetry collection.
The idea is that it will be about scent. But it's still a little while until it comes out.
Anna Hedlund/TT
Facts Aya Kanbar
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Born 2004 in Örebro.
Made her debut at 17 with "Hyperverklighet" in 2021, followed by "Aftongata" in 2023.
The debut was nominated for Borås Tidning's debutant prize and the Katapult Prize, and the follow-up to Dagens Nyheter's culture prize. In 2023, she was awarded Samfundet De Nio's Christmas prize.
