Berättelseregimen. En studie i svensk poesikritik 2016–2025

Sammanfattning

What is the common understanding of contemporary poetry in Sweden? The purpose of this essay is to extract a prevalent notion of what poetry is or should be. In order to do this, I examine the critical reception of eleven rather different works of poetry, published between 2016 and 2025. As a mirror to Eirik Vassenden's idea of Norwegian contemporary poetry being ”the new novel”, I try to define the interpretational position of Swedish critics by furthering Jacques Rancière's three regimes of art into a fourth – the story regime. The prevalent notion of poetry, as expressed and reproduced by critics in daily newspapers during the past decade, is very much coloured by story-telling: the story itself, the topic, the narrator-subject, the authenticity. In relation to this stance occurs the sense that the work of poetry, almost synonymous with the story, might as well be something else. Characteristic of the story regime and the prevalent notion of poetry is that works without a clear narrative structure are considered difficult and obscure.