Maria Freij

My research

In 2008, I was awarded my PhD in English (Creative Writing) from The University of Newcastle, Australia. My thesis I Was Here, consisted of a collection of poetry and an exegisis; the latter dealt with how the (Swedish) childhood landscape is represented in the poetry of contemporary poetry, and focused also on the ways in which the expatriate experience manifests in the childhood poems of Lars Gustafsson. My research since has focused on Gustafsson's poetry in terms of expatriation, metanostalgia, lost and salvaged landscapes, and his treatment of the image as key to his production. I am currently writing a book about the childhood landscapes in Lars Gustafsson's poetry, and their impact on the narrative present in his expatriate production during his 20 years living, working, and writing in Austin, Texas.

My Master's degree is in Applied Linguistics and I also work with translation, primarily of poetry, and have translated poems by Lars Gustafsson, Tomas Tranströmer, Tua Forsström, and Eva Ström. In 2014, the complete collection of my translation from French into English of Boris Vian's posthumous collection Je Voudrais pas Crever was published by Adelaide University Press as I'd Like Not to Pass Away in If I say If: The Poetry and Short Stories of Boris Vian (Eds. Alistair Rolls, John West-Sooby, and Jean Fornasiero); I have also written and presented about translation theory and practice.

As a creative writer, I am working on my second collection of poetry (my first book is forthcoming from Australian publisher Puncher&Wattmann) and having recently finished a novel, I am now working on a collection of short stories, the latter in Swedish.

Publications