Attick bbrgoign!
by Anna Hedenrud
I’m very fond of the comic book and manga traditions, where emotions and situations can be explained instantly by just one word, letter or sign, accentuated by typeface and/or colour: a vivid KAPOW! or a Japanese sign all across the page. There is a strong sense of motion in those ”KAPOWS!”, captured on paper.
I’ve found that I’m often looking for ways to escape or obstruct language in my work. It’s like I want to trick language and all the rules that bind it, sow some weeds and see what happens when the letters are barely visible. When it works, I get a strong sense of freedom and communicating without barriers.
When I started working more focused on assembling the letters, I worked intuitively with shapes and sounds in mind. The typefaces had different ’abilities’ as I imagined it: hard or soft edges as well as different sounds. It was like I caught the letters on camera for just one split second and then they moved on. Once I started to explore the moving quality of the poems, I realised there was something really silly and unpredictable going on!
As per my usual working habit, I didn’t continue on to make a book right away. When I did, it felt like returning to the same spot in a garden, untended for a couple of years, and discover everything overgrown, just the way it was meant to be, without any pruning scissors or in your face wordings. Strangely, or not strangely, a place to breathe.
Attick bbrgoign! was published by Viktlösheten press, 2024.
About the poet
Anna Hedenrud (b. 1980) is an artist and teacher based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Works include on ameocha (Timglaset) and WANTED (nOIR:Z). Co-editor of Viktlösheten press.
viktlosheten.xyz
