Ancient Algorithms

by Katrine Øgaard Jensen, Ursula Andkjær Olsen (Contributor), Sawako Nakayasu (Contributor)

An utterly singular project from National Translation Award winner, Katrine Øgaard Jensen.

Equal parts exercise and exorcism, Ancient Algorithms recasts translation as an endlessly generative art form unto itself. Poet-translator Katrine Øgaard Jensen mistranslates, rewrites, and remixes her award-winning translations of Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s poetry based on a series of self-imposed rules and rituals in collaboration with poets Sawako Nakayasu, Aditi Machado, CAConrad, Baba Badji, Paul Cunningham, and Ursula Andkjær Olsen herself.



Katrine Øgaard Jensen and her collaborators engage in transritual and transcreation as acts of writing—transwriting. Their varied triggers and processes are spectacular. Ancient Algorithms reveals immense possibilities of language and poetry to become fearless and unbordered.

—Don Mee Choi, author of Mirror Nation

120 pages, Paperback

Expected publication September 30, 2025

About the author

Katrine Øgaard Jensen is a poet and translator of Danish literature. She is the author of Ancient Algorithms (Sarabande Books, 2025), a collaborative book of poems with Baba Badji, CAConrad, Paul Cunningham, Aditi Machado, Sawako Nakayasu, and Ursula Andkjær Olsen. A recipient of several fellowships and awards—including the National Translation Award in Poetry, the Kenyon Review’s Peter Taylor Fellowship, the Danish Arts Foundation’s Young Artistic Elite Fellowship, and Kjeld Elfelt’s Memorial Grant from the Danish Translators’ Association—her translations include Third-Millennium Heart (Action Books, 2017), Outgoing Vessel (Action Books, 2021), and My Jewel Box (Action Books, 2022), all by Ursula Andkjær Olsen, as well as To The Most Beautiful by Mette Moestrup (co•im•press, 2024). Previously, she taught Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Columbia University, where she also served as Acting Director of Literary Translation at Columbia (LTAC). Jensen currently serves as Executive Director of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA).