Although Marianne Larsen is not highly profiled as a person in the literary social circles, she is known as one of the very best Danish poets of today.
As she has put it herself: "I have always been private and I reserve the right to be shy.
Actually that is why I started to write.
" The start of her career as a writer was as far back as early childhood where she wrote fairy tales, poems, etc.
, and she had her debut as a poet at the age of 18 when she had some poems published in a much revered literary magazine, "Hvedekorn.
" Already in her first published collection of poems, "Koncentrationer" (1971) did she use the style that has been her distinctive feature as a writer, i.
e.
a dreamlike and surreal language which often depicts the collisions of several different, parallel worlds.
This obviously is an inner, personal world she projects on the world of realities which she did not care to depict until some years later when her social involvement became more obvious.
This social involvement is highlighted in many of her poems and she advocates a very simple solution to the misery of the underdogs of this world.
Speaking against all kinds of subjection she over and over again stresses the impact of language as a valid tool in conquering the world and changing it.
Something which she finds absolutely necessary as the world is in the claws of oppressors.
In all she has written, and that means almost 40 collections of poems, several childrens' books, novels and plays, she has been unique in style and subjects.
Many of her poems have been published in foreign literary magazines and she often takes part in seminars, etc.
abroad.
In the 1990's she published four more or less autobiographical novels: "Guess Who Loves You", "Alien Happiness", "Gallery Reality" and "Guests of Each Other".
They do not come up to the standard of the poetry, but they are interesting in telling about a nervous and over-sensitive person who in many ways resembles her, but not is a mirror image.
There is much more of her as a person in a poem like e.
g.
this one: "Learn by heart a butterfly on the pane/its outstretched white wing patterns.
//The glass draws back for it.
/The butterfly vanishes into the garden.
/The glass slowly flows over again.
//No trace remains in the pane/of the impossible.
/But I have learned it by heart.
" The Danish society has rewarded her for her writings by awarding her several grants.
In 1989 she even received the prestigious life grant by Statens Kunstfond.
That in itself is considered a seal of approval.