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  • The Lapland Woman and the Finland Woman
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The Lapland Woman and the Finland Woman

Judith Taylor

They’re peripheral to the story
grotesque beside the beautiful Prince and Princess
or the Snow Queen in her white sleigh

and even the talking ravens have more glamour
but the older I get, the more I think about
those two sisters

who live in the cold North
in houses that are always hot, since they’re always
cooking up
whatever they need

in the way of soup, or spells.
Hardy and self-reliant
hospitable, too, to passing strays

generous with their stores and their directions
and terribly wise:
they are the ones I want to be

not Gerda. Though I never will.
And they’d laugh to think I admire them.
They laugh more than is dignified, and don’t care

who overhears.
They send each other letters
now and then, written on stockfish

and each one chuckles knowledgeably
over the other’s latest
as she adds it to the pot.


Judith Taylor

from Northwords Now, issue 28, autumn 2014

Reproduced by permission of the poet.

Tags:

Best Scottish Poems 2014 fairy tales sisters

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2014. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2014 was Roderick Watson.

Author's note:

This poem was written in 2011, and the immediate trigger for it was another poem: 'Rune of the Finland Woman', by the great American poet Marilyn Hacker, which she read at StAnza that year and which sent my imagination back to my old Hans Christian Andersen, a strange, hauntingly-illustrated book from my childhood which has worked its way into my writing more than once over the years. I loved Hacker's poem, but I was struck that she hadn't mentioned the Finland Woman's sister, or the thing that intrigued me most about the two of them when I first read The Snow Queen: their postal system. So my poem began with that, and then worked back from it to try to explain my fascination with the characters.

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Best Scottish Poems 2014

edited by Roderick Watson
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Judith Taylor

Judith Taylor has been a librarian and now works in IT; she has published two pamphlet and one full-length collection of poetry.
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