Poesi som vågar ta ställning Mottagandet av Jenny Wrangborgs Kallskänken

Abstract

This essay examines how Jenny Wrangborg’s collection of poetry entitled Kallskänken was received in Swedish media when published in 2010. The material consists of twelve articles from newspapers, both national and local, as well as in magazines and on radio. The analysis is divided according to Lars Furuland’s definition of working class-literature, as literature by, about, and for the working class. These three aspects, together with an analysis of intertextuality in the articles, make up the four analytical chapters of the essay. The aspects are thereafter compared with each other with the purpose of finding patterns in how the collection of poetry is commented and what the writers evaluate as positive or negative, but also to see if there are similarities and differences between the different sources. The result shows that the writers in the newspapers, magazines and radio put Wrangborg in a tradition of working class-literature by pointing at the resemblance to authors as Stig Sjödin and Kristian Lundberg, but they also place her in a broader Swedish literary tradition. Half of the writers mentions that Kallskänken is written by a worker, and they also mention aspects as gender and age, but the most common term to describe Wrangborg is with the word “debutant”. Ten out of twelve writers mention that she writes about workers. The material shows that the most evaluated aspect is for workers, which all writers agree on that she does, and the question is if it is seen as positive or negative. The different readings places her in different literary traditions and there is both possibilities and limitations in the reading of Kallskänken as working class-literature.