On September 24th Hallgrímur Helgason published his latest book of poetry, “Við skjótum títuprjónum” (We Shoot Pins). It contains one long poem in 22 chapters that was written between 2016 and 2020, mostly in airports and hotel rooms. It’s a raging social critical poem that takes on the good life of people in the West, that have sealed themselves off from the rest of the world and its problems, all the while continuing their exploitation of it. As citizens of the good life countries, we still have our conscience to cope with, but more and more we have managed to outsource our dilemmas by pushing the like button on social media in support of all good causes. We Shoot Pins.
We are prisoners of the freedom
that history gave us
overfed and elated
prisoners of our bad conscience