Virgula

* Virgula received the prestigious Awater Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Ida Gerhardt Poetry Prize, the Herman de Coninck Prize and De Grote Poëzieprijs (Grand Poetry Prize) for best poetry collection of the year. * Janssen's engagement and honesty in addressing themes about motherhood, grief and illness is revelatory and compelling. * The body features in Janssen\'s poetry in many forms, from vehicle to target, and from weapon to wound. Her ability to make her often physical fascinations tangible is unparalleled, as she condenses them into something that nestles in the body like a secret. * The collection\'s obsessive engagement with a punctuation mark, the comma, makes it a perfect fit with our interest in interdisciplinary publications, expanding the possibilities of traditional poetry publishing. * Introduces an award-winning and highly acclaimed collection to an English readership, following the success of our recent collection by Anne Vegter. * Translator Michele Hutchison won the 2020 Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's The Discomfort of Evening, and the collection will benefit from her excellent reputation and reach. * The translation has been supported by the Dutch Literary Fund.

Virgula is an award-winning collection by acclaimed Dutch poet Sasja Janssen, and her second collection to be published in English, translated by Michele Hutchison.Virgula is an award-winning collection by acclaimed Dutch poet Sasja Janssen, and her second collection to be published in English. Taking as its title the latin word for ’comma’, the poems in Virgula reveal the stories hidden in the spaces in-between: the unending and the unresolved; memories that refuse to be contained. In Janssen’s poetry, the comma becomes much more than a punctuation mark, and is invoked as a muse and companion; she calls on her in every poem, as if she were a goddess, a friend or lover, someone who offers space when the emptiness becomes too heavy. In Janssen’s poetry, painful stories often unfold, events that never came to pass, but which leave traces and scars. Virgula strikes a balance between mystery and razor-sharp intent, through constant shifts and contrasts in perspective. The comma stops the stillness, and allows thoughts and language to move forward. Virgula was awarded the Awater Poetry Prize and was nominated for the Ida Gerhardt Poetry Prize and the Herman de Coninck Prize and De Grote Poëzieprijs (Grand Poetry Prize) for best poetry collection of the year.