An sad song wrapped in pink. I know microfiction and micropoetry exist, so here I introduce the micro-song. It's quite addictive when on repeat.
To Catch a Dream
You set your traps
from wall to wall
hide
in small corners
in the dark
but don't you know
that you can't catch a dream?
The dream catches you.
I used this nice photo (which is one of my odes to the public space) as a prompt and wrote chapter II of of a yet unnamed series of poems (here is chapter I). Unlike fight (which might by the way, be chapter 0), instead of the image here it's the text that is moving. It's the first time that I'm experimenting with animated text and I must say that I like the idea a lot.
#chapter II
We sat together.
A body's gap between us
for the wind to roam free.
We hummed an old song
in false notes. The wind
sang along.
An eternal second
– a good company.
Another little boxed world. Boxes represent the confines of our existence, largely but not exclusively within society. I always try to combine playfulness with profound themes, as I believe that this playfulness speaks directly to the core of our existence, to an inner child.
Visually, technological elements (ear pods, antennas, chips) are juxtaposed to the actual act of listening, and finding meaning, while strong words demand individually and as a whole our attention.
The text of this piece is composed of found material from the text that accompanied Gernot Wieland's video Turtleneck Phantasies (2022) at Kindl – Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin. The video-art piece was highly inspirational and much of this inspiration was transferred to the text describing it. I took pieces of it and made something new, opening up the dialogue.
Learn to Listen
childhood
second skin
what remains?
a kind of obsession
protective remembrance
words
texts and drawings
dance, the absurd moments
The ubiquitous presence
all the little forms
traumatic experiences
excluded
I have phantasies
and (mostly illegible)
little attention.
What stories do I tell myself
unheard, and forgotten voices
possible ways of returning to the centre
anchor
a serious shipwreck
whose stories are told
dedicated to the murmuring, the illegible, the unspeakable,
In other words
Contemporary
In case you get lost, I made a
We walk through deserts
in alien lands.
Our mouths
are running
dry.
The first in a series of illustrated dialogues, #chapter I goes wild in the combination of image and text embracing punk aesthetics and posing an important question: How important is the legibility of text for expressing its meaning and how much can we omit before the narrative breaks?
#chapter I
january 23
The earth had turned upside down
so I woke up and saw the moon
where it had never been before
or was it me that had changed place?
No, no, you said
the world has turned upside down and
I am sisyphus or maybe
it's the summer that's coming.
Poetry issues #26, the last poetry issue featuring many works, was published in five parts between March and December 2022. It's a body of work that largely attempts to take poetry issues to the next level: The pieces are steadily leaving the 2D world, more dimensions (eg. audio and video) are being incorporated into the work, and the visual elements mingle more than ever with the text. And since this is just the beginning, I have decided to stop working in bundles of poems and let each piece grow on its own, and be published as a separate unit.
Part I: Our Lost Babies (poem), Mirrors (artwork)
A "lost baby" is anything we dreamt of and didn't flourish, everything we strived for but lost in the end. Creation and loss are main themes in this piece, but closely connected to letting go and moving on.
Mirrors is a larger assemblage piece (95x60), the first one in a series of worlds. Every box is its own small world but they are all connected and constitute a single piece, like a mind with its several thoughts and ideas.
For more detail:
Part II: Distance, a handmade book (and a song)
My own handmade paper, colored and illustrated with a mixed media technique, integrating collage elements, handwritten text and lots of color, that I always love.
Distance
The howling of the wind
triumphant in the space between us.
I just want to sleep
imagine the death of the wind
silence under the yellow sun
children's laughter roaring
a happy dog's bark.
That's how you tolerate loneliness
how sadness becomes sweet.
In a dream you held my hand
and led me through a dancing crowd.
In that dream you were my man.
An impression of the physical book:
Also, here's a link to the digital flipbook or, if you prefer, to the .pdf.
Part III: A Fight (video with sound)
A closer blending of text and image. In the video, the text is spoken and the image is moving. Everything changes a little in benefit of the whole.
A Fight
You were afraid that winter would come
and it was true: the days were getting shorter.
You longed for that last day on the beach
but the weather had already changed.
The end, most of the time, doesn’t come with a bang
but as an echo of thoughtless words or as an aftertaste
of dry, bitter grass.
It’s crazy how the weather changes
faster than my mood.
Anyway, I believe we’ll make it
through the winter.
We both haven’t been really good
at being weighed down by reality.
“Lightness” has the word “light” in it. Light is spring.
The last day on the beach I was alone.
I found in my bag a kernel of corn
that you had given me. It was stale
but I ate it ceremonially. It was late
it was cloudy and I was cold.
I set our messages of fire. We’ve had enough
sun for a summer. Now it was time to step back inside.
Part IV: Appropriation
I appropriated this piece in the same way man appropriates nature, in the same way that I am appropriated, boxed, controlled, tamed: the victim becomes the perpetrator.
So, I made sure
the animals
would graze
behind a wire
fence.
Part V: tinder date
More on the playful than the profound side, using the same superficiality that it comments upon, "tinder date" is the result of careful observation of the online dating world. I view my character with empathy, but of course my viewpoint is almost never a flattering one.
My tinder date
I shaved my balls
I rode my horse
I did my best
She never came
Now who will save me?
You can read more about the poetry issues project here.
More on the playful than the profound side, using the same superficiality that it comments upon, "tinder date" is the result of careful observation of the online dating world. I view my character with empathy, but of course my viewpoint is almost never a flattering one.
My tinder date
I shaved my balls
I rode my horse
I did my best
She never came
Now who will save me?
This project ends the 26th volume of poetry issues and the poetry issues project itself comes to an end. A new cycle begins, of course, but as I am turning artistically towards more three-dimensional representations of the text and as every visual and every text project become intertwined, I feel that they grow on their own and not as part of a bundle. I want to give them thus the right to exist more than ever apart from each other.
If you are curious, you can read more about the poetry issues project here.
There's a nice story behind this piece: My very good friend Alex bought this print as a present for me, as a souvenir of my visiting her in Sweden. The paper was quite old and it had lost its plasticity. As a result, the print didn't make it whole on the trip back home. "I will restore it", I said to Christian. "Why don't you make it yours?" he said. And so I did. This is half the reason why I named the piece "Appropriation". The other half has to do with man treating nature, even when it comes to his own kind, as a commodity that he owns. Under the same principle, which might be called 'efficiency' or even 'evolution', nature, and man as part of it, suffers boxed, controlled and tamed:
So, I made sure
the animals
would graze
behind a wire
fence.
You can read more about the poetry issues project here.
In a sense, this 3rd part of poetry issues #26 is a closer blending of text and image. In the video, the text is spoken and the image is moving. Everything changes a little in benefit of the whole.
A Fight
You were afraid that winter would come
and it was true: the days were getting shorter.
You longed for that last day on the beach
but the weather had already changed.
The end, most of the time, doesn’t come with a bang
but as an echo of thoughtless words or as an aftertaste
of dry, bitter grass.
It’s crazy how the weather changes
faster than my mood.
Anyway, I believe we’ll make it
through the winter.
We both haven’t been really good
at being weighed down by reality.
“Lightness” has the word “light” in it. Light is spring.
The last day on the beach I was alone.
I found in my bag a kernel of corn
that you had given me. It was stale
but I ate it ceremonially. It was late
it was cloudy and I was cold.
I set our messages of fire. We’ve had enough
sun for a summer. Now it was time to step back inside.
You can read more about the poetry issues project here.
Creation is a process of trial and error. Since my major interest lies in the different ways of presenting and experiencing text, for part 2 of poetry issues #26 I created a small book from scratch: My own handmade paper, colored and illustrated with a mixed media technique, integrating collage elements, handwritten text and lots of color, that I always love. The book itself is a unique, collectible item. However, below you can find a digital version of it. All I can say about the poem, which is also available here in simple text form, is that it appears as a common love piece, but maybe a second reading will reveal the underlying theme of gender identity. In any case, I prefer to leave the interpretation open to the reader.
For "Our Lost Babies" I included an audio reading of the piece. Here I went a step further. This time I have a song for you:
Distance
The howling of the wind
triumphant in the space between us.
I just want to sleep
imagine the death of the wind
silence under the yellow sun
children's laughter roaring
a happy dog's bark.
That's how you tolerate loneliness
how sadness becomes sweet.
In a dream you held my hand
and led me through a dancing crowd.
In that dream you were my man.
An impression of the physical book:
Also, here's a link to the digital flipbook or, if you prefer, to the .pdf.
You can read more about the poetry issues project here.