Bjork: with an experimental new vocal album, one of pop music's great explorers continues to venture into uncharted waters. Here, she talks living on the edge with a fellow avatar of the avant-garde

LAURIE ANDERSON: So, Bjork, I love your new record, Medulla [Elektra/Atlantic]--especially some of the words. The song "Sonnet" sounds like the kind of thing 17th-century poets like John Donne or Andrew Marvell would have written. What did you have in mind there?

BJORK: Actually, there are two lyrics on the album that are not by me, and that's one of them. It's by E.E. Cummings.

LA: What about E.E. Cummings struck you?

B: I didn't even know he existed because I'm more familiar with Icelandic and other European things. I was introduced to his writing, like, five years ago. It's the first person I read who I just immediately wanted to sing his words. I have read a lot of poetry, but never stuff where I felt like, Oh, I want to make this mine! But it's so different with him. I can't put my finger on it. He's kind of euphoric, but humble at the same time.

LA: He also has a way of breaking things up into smaller fragments, like something broke and he's putting it back together in a different way. I can see why you would love E.E. Cummings.

B: It goes so well in the mouth! It's weird. He's somebody who was born in Boston 100 years ago. What would I have in common with him? But yeah, it's one of those few times when somebody writes something and you sort of wish you could have written it. But it's just, like, 10 times better because it's easy to do lyrics. It's kind of slogans, you know? But E.E. Cummings's poetry is all the little bits in between.

LA: Tell me about singing with Robert Wyatt [on "Submarine"]. How did you end up collaborating on that one? It's so gorgeous with all that low chanting.

B: He's got an incredible range--like seven octaves or something crazy! Robert was probably the most spontaneous one. After I finished the record I felt that someone or something was missing, and maybe it was the more improvisational thing that the voice does to be soulful. So I thought he would be excellent at it. I literally called him up, and he said yes. He got a CD the next day, and I drove to his home, which is three hours north of London. We set up a laptop and a microphone in his bedroom, and he sang all day. Basically, he would replace my vocals and obviously add a little bit of his own, too. Then we got drunk in the evening. The next day we were going to continue, but we decided it wasn't necessary, and I just went home.

LA: [laughs] That's so great! It must have been so satisfying to do something so quickly, because some of these songs sound like bigger productions, with all the choirs. Was that fun to do?

B: Yeah, you're spot-on. It was so fun to do. You just want something instantaneous, you know? So you enjoy it so much. And going to Robert's house--he's got such a charming little house with his gorgeous wife. They told us tons of stories. It was just so much like going into somebody else's universe. It was just delicious.

LA: I had that experience a couple of weeks ago because I went to Iceland for the first time. I was in Reykjavik for that big music day. That was incredible! It was a shock to be in a country where everyone is an artist, you know? People were either singing or playing or writing a saga or making a film. [both laugh] It was like a dream come true. What is it like to live in a place where everybody is doing something like that? Was it claustrophobic at all, or was it inspiring?

B: For me at least, it felt great. It's not only art: My father built his house, and my family hunts the food they eat. Or half of it--let's not exaggerate. They knit dresses, too. So it's kind of self-sufficient in that way. It's also kind of nice because being an actress and things like that aren't put on a pedestal. Sometimes the reason why you start making music is that the music in the local bar is rubbish, you know?. So you might as well do it. So, I think you are right because on most small islands, the people have a really strong tendency of getting claustrophobic--you have that sort of lifelong "Should I stay, or should I go?" I noticed that also in places like Japan or New Zealand or Hawaii. You can feel pretty stuck after a while.

LA: But Iceland seems so different from the other islands like Japan or England. They seem like they have a lot in common: They have the king and the tea and the big navies and the gardens and all--they have the same kind of obsessions, and they're very formal. But I was so shocked by the people in Iceland. They didn't see formal at all. They gave me this book to read, Independent People [Halldor Laxness's chronicle of tragedy and survival in Iceland], and while your record is filled with so much generosity and graciousness, in that book there's a lot of silence and stubbornness. Can you relate to that as an Icelander also?

B: I think Icelandic people are very stubborn. It's kind of a stereotype to find the reason, but I think maybe it's because it was a pretty hard place to survive in before the last century. The people who survived were the ones who were almost aggressively optimistic. It was like they insisted on surviving. Like, with a lot of people in Iceland--I don't know if you know this--but if you start saying, "Oh, the weather isn't so nice," they get really defensive. They go, "Yes it is!"s [both laugh] But we're definitely not the Latin kind of extrovert types.