“Swedes Who Love You in Another Language”: The Making of a Swedish Sylvia Plath and its Post-translational Effects on Swedish Poetry

Abstract In October 1975, the first collection of translated Sylvia Plath poems was published in Sweden. This was an important literary event, which inspired a whole generation of Swedish women poets in numerous ways. This essay focuses on how the poet and translator Siv Arb introduced and translated Plath in Sweden and how she, together with Plath’s literary agent and former sister-in-law, Owlyn Hughes, created a Swedish Sylvia Plath. Using archival material, the essay explores the different aesthetics that Arb and Hughes wanted the collection to portray. It also shows how three prominent Swedish poets—Eva Ström, Åsa Nelvin, and Katarina Frostenson—have responded to Plath’s translated poetry since the late 1970s.