Ása Marin
Bio
Ása Marin was born on June 26, 1977 and grew up in Hafnarfjörður, where she is still growing up. After ten year in Öldutúnsskóli she studied at Verzlunarskóli Íslands. Then she finished a B.ed. degree in the Iceland University of Education.
Poetry was Ása's first go at writing when she was ten years old. The poem was about her sister and appeared in the children's section of Morgunblaðið. And so it happened that her first piece of writing accidentally revealed who was her sisters secret crush. Not all family members were pleased.
When Ása was sixteen she joined a poetry group in Verzlunarskólinn, lead by Þórður Helgason. They called themselfs 'Poetrydragons'. There she learned to refine her writings, and gained confidence in handling figures of speech, poetic language and puns. She published her first book of poetry, Búmerang (1997), when she was reading for her final exams, and the next years her poetry appeared in numerous collections and literary journals.
After taking a course on creative writing led by Þorvaldur Þorsteinsson and Hlín Agnarsdóttir, she started workin on prose, first short stories and then novels. Since 2013 she has used her talent together with her education and written study material for Menntamálastofnun (The Directorate of Education).
Homepage : https://www.asamarin.is/
From the author
The Need to Write and Permission to Do It
From childish rhymes about a mouse (that walked into a house, in a purple blouse, looking for its spouse) to published novels, I have almost always written. From the mouse I wrote rhymes and sent them to the children’s section of the newspaper Morgunblaðið. My first published piece of writing accidentally disclosed who my sister’s secret crush was; not all family members were amused. I still remember the feeling of seeing my poem in the paper, published and for everyone to read. I believed I was a brilliant poet. I was ten years old and felt like I could conquer the world.
In secondary school I got to know a poetry group called “Poetry Dragons”, led by Þórður Helgason. There I learned about literary concepts and how to use them in my writing. He encouraged us and taught me that poems do not need to rhyme, that it matters more to pick the right words and draw up a picture. Little by little, my lyrical embarrassments changed into readable texts.
When I was sixteen, it was not very cool to write poems. The same went for knitting. So to avoid committing social suicide I kept quiet about those talents. But in my final year I knitted in the school’s hallways and entered all poetry and short story competitions held by the school’s paper. While studying for my final exams I published my first book of poetry. In the years that followed, my poetry appeared in numerous collections and literary journals. I was too shy to use the title poet because I thought it was too big a label, but the title young poet suited me. I felt more like a cub than a wolf. Later I would use the title poet—when I would have written many great poems and it would be too vain of me to use the adjective young due to my enhanced age.
I enrolled in the university, but not to study Icelandic or literature; instead, I chose a different path. The gap grew between myself and those who talked about muse instead of inspiration and defined texts and ideas from words that ended in isms. I was still writing, but in my mind, doubt sprang up. Doubt that grew into a hurdle. I don’t know what bothered me more: the attitude of the people I compared my writing to, or my lack of self-confidence and the insecurity that I might have chosen the wrong course of study. Whatever it was, it made me believe that I no longer had the right to write. A few years after graduating, the ink ran slower out of my pen. The stories kept bubbling in my head and the poems sprouted like weeds in my heart, but I lacked the time and effort to sort through them. Anything that I put down on paper was like a tap that had been turned on to clear my head and bring some relief. However, it all went without a second thought in my drawer. Hidden away.
Just before the financial crisis in 2008, I enrolled in a creative writing workshop, held by Þorvaldur Þorsteinsson. Even though I felt that I’d lost the permission to write, the need was still there. The workshop was great. Not only did it improve my writing, but it also forced me to break down the walls I had built up. It opened my eyes that it was me, and no one else, who had forbidden me to write. Because no one else has the power to grant someone permission to write or not.
With a fresh stamped permission from myself to write, I began to sort through my hidden poems. Shortly after meeting Þorvaldur I published my second book of poetry. Then I enrolled in different writing courses and listened to online lectures. My toolbox grew with each book I read—books about creative writing as well as fiction writing. Old and new. With every new tool in my toolbox I gained a little more confidence. Eventually, I finished my first novel and took it to a publisher.
When the walls broke down I finally saw that the talented writers that I had compared myself with, and felt inferior to, were not the ones who talked down to me. I did that all on my own. The literature-snob that I had carried in my heart and the false belief that one could only write if they had the education for it, had backfired and suffocated my own self-worth as a writer.
Today I am grateful for all my mentors and for those writers who help other writers and lift them up. I am fortunate to have well-wishing people around me that I know will guide me towards the light, should I ever get lost in the darkness again by denying myself permission to write. In return, I do my best to be the light for other writers who are suffering from the need to tell a story but allow the doubt to grow like weeds, suffocating their garden of storytelling.
Ása Marin, 2022
