Pia Tafdrup è una scrittrice danese la cui opera è caratterizzata da una profonda esplorazione dell'esistenza umana e del linguaggio. Il suo stile poetico è evocativo e ritmico, spesso approfondendo temi come il corpo, la natura e la fluidità della vita. Tafdrup indaga la connessione tra il mondo interiore ed esteriore, trovando bellezza nell'ordinario. La sua scrittura è sia introspettiva che universale, risuonando con lettori di diversa provenienza.
Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark's leading poets. The Taste of Steel and The Smell of Snow are the first two collections in her new series of books focussing on the human senses. While taste and smell dominate, the poems are equally about the way of the world and the losses that people sustain during the course of their lives.
In 1999, Queen's Gate, Pia Tafdrup's ninth book, won Scandinavia's most prestigious literary award, the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Now available in English in a lovely rendition by David McDuff, English language readers can experience this outstanding poet's celebrated collection. "From water you have come," writes Tafdrup, creating her own myth through a sequence of highly sensual poems centered on water in all its forms. This is a composite picture of the basic elements of the life-cycle of nature and man, mirrored through a conceptual world that takes the body as its axis, in poetic language of great visual and emotional power. The poems are written from a female point of view, and reflect the whole story of human life and suffering.