About the work
alphabet (Danish: alfabet) is a book-length poem by the Danish poet Inger Christensen, published in 1981 and among her best-known works. It is available in German in Hanns Grössel's translation. As a theatre evening, the text premiered at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg in March 2026, directed by Thom Luz, combining spoken language, percussion and live music.
Plot
There is no plot in the usual sense: the poem is divided into 14 sections running from a to n, and each section calls up things in the world beginning with its letter. The number of lines in each section is set by the Fibonacci sequence, from a single-line opening to 610 lines in the final part. As the enumeration grows, images of destruction, ravaged nature and nuclear threat increasingly mingle with the plants, animals and everyday objects.
Cultural significance
The poem joins mathematical order to the question of what endures in the face of possible annihilation, and is regarded as one of the major works of Christensen, regarded as the foremost Danish experimental poet of her generation. Susanna Nied's English translation received the American-Scandinavian Foundation translation prize in 1982.