Kuluk Helms (Denmark)

a poet, performing artist, public speaker, culture bearer, and Greenlandic mask dancer.

Kuluk’s poetry collection My Soul Has Growing Aches reflects on the challenges associated with growth, love, and an anxious mind. Her work is primarily driven by curiosity, a gentle challenge to norms, and a desire to foster community in line with Inuit philosophy, emphasizing the strength of the collective.

She holds a Master’s degree in Arts from Essex University and is a PhD student at CEARC, Université Paris-Saclay. Her research explores how the end of, access to, and practice of culture may influence narratives of the self, both collectively and individually, for Inuit in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). The main topics of her research are decolonization, Indigenous epistemologies, and existential risks.

* * *

I am standing by the water.
I think of you always
By the water.

Too often
I think
of you.
I throw a stone and see:
It broke the surface of the water and sank.

A thought:
I am the stone,
You are the sea.
Pretty, unceasingly
Dark.

Another thought:
I am standing by the water.
I think of you always
By the water.

And it happens
Less and less often.

I threw a stone and saw
It sank.
The water
Regains its calm.

I am the depth.
You are the stone.

Translated into English by Manana Matiashvili