Jimmen
Øyvind Rimbereid
Jimmen is a narrative long poem about the fjording horse Jimmen and his coachman.
Their job is to collect kitchen refuse in Stavanger in the late 1970’s. They meander through a city that is undergoing changes. A new Norway is taking shape around them. While the coachman speaks in the Stavanger dialect, Jimmen has a bristling, unfinished language based on old Norwegian word forms, a helpless grammar and rhythmic speech patterns reminiscent of ballad stanzas. The two of them exist in a limbo between historic fact and myth. The coachman has a hole in his heart and a knitting sister who tends to think of him as “Wee Jeremiah”. Jimmen’s harness is uncomfortable, and his legs would rather gallop along paths of their own choosing.
