“Nature loss and climate change find their way into Mona Høvring’s poetry, without the poems losing their powerful ambiguity … The seasons’ ability to imitate themselves/ is still intact, reads one of the poems. The book as a whole does not take it for granted that this will last. On the contrary … Høvring’s poems reverse the anthropocentric perspective of Christianity and suggest that everything from the pink-footed goose to the mayfly can be the salt of the earth. In other words: Everyone may be necessary for the cycle to continue – for life on the planet to continue – consistently and wonderfully expressed, with a surplus of meaning that few Norwegian poets come close to.”
Tom Egil Hverven, Klassekampen
“Høvring’s lively language is, as always, a joy to encounter … Høvring’s poetry speaks indirectly, through something else. An image, a sound, a mood – repetitions that create structures. This can of course be said about other poetry as well, but the experience of reading Høvring stands out in this way. Her poetry is far from easy to grasp. It may come from the margin, but it places itself at the centre of literature and at the centre of life.”
Katrine Heiberg, Morgenbladet
“A literary achievement … In some poems, it is as if the forest opens up to us without human interference … The sober and seemingly humble language opens up our own memories and associations, but I feel a kind of quiet sadness the whole time while I read. It is as if all this familiar, the very cycle of nature, is about to slip away, even in the text … The words of poetry can touch nature’s sense of its own life cycle, without diminishing it, and everything else imaginable. Mona Høvring succeeds in doing just that, in a moving and meaningful book.”
Sigrid E. Strømmen, Vårt Land
“In Forest Interior with Fox and Other Poems, the loss of nature and the power of the imagination are central themes, fortunately formulated in Høvring’s ever-expanding language… Once again, as so many times before, Høvring offers us ambiguity and playfulness. The profound seriousness of Forest Interior with Fox and Other Poems does not make me any less uplifted after reading it, quite the contrary. She lets me get lost in the poems, in nature and in all the possibilities that lie there.”
Agnetha Thormodsdatter, Krabben
“Nature loss and climate change are becoming more prominent in Mona Høvring’s imaginative poetry, without the poems losing their powerful ambiguity.”
Tom Egil Hverven, Klassekampen, BEST BOOKS OF 2025