The poet Natasha S. has received the May Star Poetry Award, the poetry prize of the Writers’ Union of Iceland and the National and University Library of Iceland, for her poetry collection Mara kemur í heimsókn (Mara Comes to Visit).
The award was presented at a ceremony today in Þjóðarbókhlaða, the library building at Arngrímsgata 3. This is the tenth time the May Star has been awarded: it has been given every year since 2017 and is the only award of its kind in Iceland given solely for published poetry collections.
In its citation the jury calls the book “strong and coherent, passionate and honest, personal and political”, and says that it gives a powerful account of the anxiety, helplessness and threats of our time. The speaker of the poems confronts her fears in a nightmarish reality where personal experience and world events intertwine.
Mara kemur í heimsókn was published in 2025 and deals, among other things, with the author’s return to Russia after a long absence. It is also a reckoning with the political and cultural state of the present day, and it throws light on the tension between personal ties and a changed view of the world.
Natasha S. is an Icelandic writer of Russian origin who has drawn well-deserved attention for her poetry, articles and editorial work. Her first poetry collection, Máltaka á stríðstímum (Language Acquisition in Wartime, 2022), won the Tómas Guðmundsson Literary Prize and was also nominated for the May Star.
The May Star is awarded to poetry collections published in Iceland and delivered to the National and University Library of Iceland under legal deposit. The award is meant to draw attention to the flourishing publication of poetry and to the importance of poetry in Icelandic cultural life.
The National and University Library of Iceland warmly congratulates Natasha S. on the award.