Just after I wrote the text about Peter Dubé’s anthology I happened to read a book of poetry by Swedish author Leif Holmstrand, which I had picked up at a secondhand poetry sale just for its beautiful title (”stekelgång”, which is the walk of a wasp, but also the wasp’s route, a wasp tunnel, and a wasp iteration). The author’s name was at most vaguely familiar. But the poems were beautiful and very fascinating. Just as I’d been asking, again, whether there are particular imaginational forms in the phenomenology of homosexual desire, this was now a powerful love poetry which focused on concrete sensual detail (which is metaphysical in the framework of love poetry) without pronouns and without explicit gender markers also in the bodily descriptions. Eroticism in a weirdly universal guise?
It turned out that the author was an established name in alternative side of the cultural market, quite active in sexual politics and famous as a ”queer artist”, and also a visual artist. While in visual art, this was mainly about ”addressing topics” and therefore usually not embodying poetic spirit, also the more recent poetry published was quite powerful and with a relentless poetic focus. Chance signs keep showing us many of the best poets when we can't be bothered to keep track of the literary field...
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| Paper wasp dismembering a stick insect |
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