Oh, alright, I’ll admit it: I don’t understand most poetry. It baffles me. I read it, shaking my head and scowling. I don’t even understand my own poetry. Objectively speaking, most of it’s just nonsense – like how many ‘P’s or ‘S’s can I fit into a sentence? How about if I jumble up the »
When this text is eventually published the world will know who received the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. It will have been announced yesterday. The person in question will already be lauded worldwide, in today’s newspapers next Friday, with a few dissenting voices perhaps mentioning cultural politics and even fewer voices claiming that prize-giving is »
My video poem Höpöhöpö Böks won special mention at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin on friday. I was in Berlin for the book release of Gift für Anfänger in Germany, so I saw the competition program and can attest that it indeed was a great honour. Not only was everything very fancy, the »
On friday, 15. october, my second novel will be published in German translation with Kozempel & Timm. For this occassion I will visit Berlin to participate in the Book Release party – for information see the publisher’s homepage. If you’re around I would love to see you. Coinciding with the book release is the Zebra »
Heading to Bratislava for the Slovakian poetry festival Ars Poetica. Should be a ruckus. A blast. A rabluckus. Will meet friends Martin Solotruk and Jaume Subirana. And make new friends. And have a rendez-vous with one of my besties, Halldór Arnar Úlfarsson, while we both have a layover in Helsinki. Click here for more: http://www.arspoetica.sk/2010/ »
Anything an author does (or says) is viable to be used as evidence against (or for) her (or him). Their actions and words are commonly seen as shedding an invaluable light on the work they’ve given the world – and to a certain extent this is of course true. It’s hard to understand the poetry »
– the sound and the fury Talk given at the Sound Poetry Seminar in Kuopio, Finland, 4 September 2010. I I tend to write three general kinds of poetry which I keep more or less separated in the writing practice, although the borders tend to blur before publication. First there’s the poetry meant for the »
Poetry is the art of the illogical, or even anti-intellectual, performed with the tools of logic and intellectual zealotry: language. Poetry is an invoker of feeling, or more correctly, perhaps, sensation and/or experience – while simultaneously being a way of thinking, of “catching yourself thinking” and “noticing what you notice” as Allen Ginsberg called it. »
A few days ago (the rather awful) writer’s magazine Writer’s Digest tweeted the following: “Free short story competition to raise awareness for those suffering from depression”. Followed by an url. Now, being the cold-hearted asshole I am, this made me chuckle. I’m sorry for it, I truly am – I don’t mean to belittle the »
