Annual Award

Judit Benedek and SOS Romer receive the 2011 Dagerman Award!

The annual Stig Dagerman Award, issued by The Stig Dagerman Society, was first given in 1996. It was inspired by Dagerman's poem En dag om året that sets forth a vision of peace for humanity by imagining one day each year when the world is free from violence.

En dag om året borde alla låtsas
att döden vilar i ett vitt schatull.

Why don't we make believe just once a year
that Death has drowned beyond the deep blue sea.

Scroll down to read entire poem in Swedish or in translation by Laurie Thompson.

The award is given to a person who, or an organization that, in the spirit of Stig Dagerman, supports the significance and availability of the "free word" (freedom of speech), promoting inter-cultural understanding and empathy. The recipient receives 50,000 SEK from the Society in cooperation with Älvkarleby local authorities.

The Dagerman Society has gained much notoriety for giving the Stig Dagerman Award in June to no less than two authors (Elfriede Jelinek and J.M.G. Le Clézio), who later—in December—the same year, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature!

Other well-known recipients of the Stig Dagerman Award are Swedish filmmakers Lukas Moodysson and Roy Andersson, as well as Turkish writer Yasar Kemal, the Iranian Poet Ahmad Shamloo, and the British journalist Gitta Sereny. For more info see www.dagerman.se (in Swedish).

Recipients

1996	John Hron, young victim of hate crime in Sweden
1997	Yasar Kemal, Turkish writer
1998	The Swedish Public ("People's") Library
1999	Ahmad Shamlou, Iranian poet
2000	Roy Andersson, Swedish filmmaker
2001	Elise Johansson, Swedish writer
2002	Gitta Sereny, British historian and journalist
2003	Lukas Modysson, Swedish filmmaker
2004	Elfriede Jelinek, Austrian writer
2005	Göran Palm, Swedish writer
2006	Sigrid Kahle, Swedish journalist
2007	Lasse Berg, Swedish journalist
2008	J.M.G. Le Clézio, French writer
2009	Birgitta Wallin, translator, and editor of the intercultural Swedish magazine “Karavan”
2010	Eduardo Galeano, Uruguyan writer, poet, journalist and activist
2011	Judit Benedek/SOS Romer

En dag om året

En dag om året borde alla låtsas,
att döden vilar i ett vitt schatull.
Inga stora illusioner krossas
och inge skjuts för fyra dollar skull.

Världskatastrofen sover lugnt och stilla
mellan lakan på ett snyggt hotell.
Inget rep gör någon broder illa,
och inge syster slumrar vid ett slutet spjäll.

Inga män blir plötsligt sönderbrända
och ingen dör på gatorna just då.
Visst är det lögn, det kan väl hända.
Jag bara säger: Vi kan låtsas så.

Just Once a Year

Why don't we make belive just once a year
that Death has drowned beneath the deep blue sea!
no one's life is undermined by fear,
and no one shoots his neighbor for a fee.

Tempests and floods have taken a vacation,
they're resting in some luxuary hotel.
Hangmen yawn and wait for inspiration,
and every gas tap's firmly closed as well.

No one's throwing bombs in crowded places,
no drunken driver's crashed into a wall.
- 'Course it's not true, don't pull such faces!
It's make believe and dreaming after all.

Stig Dagerman, February 23, 1954.

Translation by Laurie Thompson, Daily Doses, Lampeter, 1990.