3:AM Magazine

By Paal Bjelke Andersen.

2008

The New Year’s Babies and this year’s New Year’s Babies and the New Year’s Babies and first graders and great teachers and parents and school people all over the country and the teachers and the students and today’s New Year’s Babies and people who do not give up until they have the same wealth as the one we have and hundreds of millions that’s been lifted out of poverty by the education revolution and young people who thirst for knowledge and learning as key to improving their lives and our own children and this year’s New Year’s Babies and 750 million people who have glaciers in the Himalayas as a water source and people who have been mowed down by the hurricanes and people who have been taken by drought and the scientists who first predicted the extent of climate change threats and our New Year’s Babies and defenseless women and girls under the Taliban and people who without having done anything wrong were executed at football stadiums under the Taliban and girls who did not attend school under the Taliban and nearly five million children currently attending school in Afghanistan and nearly two million girls currently attending school in Afghanistan and nearly half a million girls who started school in Afghanistan this year alone and Norwegian soldiers that contribute to these Afghan girls and boys can go to school and Afghan girls and boys who get to go to school because Norwegian soldiers helps that they can go to school and Norwegian soldiers and aid workers in Afghanistan and our military and civilians in Afghanistan and many Norwegians that today marks the new year, far from home, but in service to Norway and all other Norwegians who today are serving outside the country, for peace and reconciliation and the royal family and most of the New Year babies and my generation and those children who have opportunities that no other generation has had, and our generation and those who are now embarking.

 

 

TWO PICTURES OF A ROSE IN THE DARK

I feel with the heart.

I feel all the time.

I feel whole when we are together.

And I do not feel that I borrow or steal.

It’s about me feeling something myself, and when I feel something intense and strong, I can create these sentences.

I feel a great responsibility to provide the text value.

I try to grasp what I feel toward the gloomy glittering water.

 

I feel that I can open my heart, the pieces are in place now.

This is some of what I feel.

And I feel close to nature as well.

this is a room. it is really small. the responsibility.

That I have to push the voice to create a sound that you feel.

The name sounds different in that language.

I feel that the war in Afghanistan is a war.

 

Maybe because I feel it as larger in that the market.

I feel like a part of a system.

I always feel like a woman, always like a man (my italics).

Under global capitalism you feel at home everywhere.

I feel the water shortages in Gaza on my body.

The distribution of the

s e n s i b l e (Jacques Rancière: Politics is about what can be s e e n and what can be s a i d about what is s e e n).

 

Actually, I feel no place quite like “home.”

Here you can see that I use the words interchangeably.

“Here you can hear” feels more correct.

The places I write colours what I write.

This sentence I wrote in Oslo, the evening of 9 August 2010.

Should anyone ask me to describe it, I would do it with these words.

The voice is rough, not red.

 

Or what I feel like saying when I hear sentences like this:

I ‘ m telling y o u how I feel.

The Israeli government refused to cooperate in the investigation, denied the commission access to Israel and the Palestinian territories, refused to answer the commission’s questions and cut off the commission from examining Israeli citizens.

The question is difficult → A difficult feeling.

The feeling is good → I get a good feeling throughout the body when you touch me, Beate.

I feel for you.

We feel for you.

 

The market for poetry is small in Norway, but a little larger if it’s dealing with Afghanistan.

This sentence I wrote in Tehran, in the evening of 28 April 2010.

Names of Afghans killed arouse emotions.

To me this feels like a way to obliterate the self and on one level even one’s own voice and replace it with an attention to form and how to present the material.

The demonstration was e m o t i o n a l.

Unfortunately, so far we do not have any pictures from the event, but with a picture of a rose in the rain we thank you once again for the support you give us.

Walk into a room and run into things.

 

 

4 x 5 x 2

1.

This poem has a prehistory and a continuation. In autumn 2008, I wrote a version at the invitation of Bøygen. The version you’re reading now is

written for this book. A third will be translated into farsi and published in Iran. Both contain text from the first. It was about “marginal literature”

(that was the assignment). This is about places, and is written with the translation in mind, in Tehran and in the archipelago outside of

Tvedestrand. The Iranian version will be written in Oslo and translated in the office of Afraz Publications (انتشارات افراز: to be read from right to

left), in Nazari Street, a few blocks southeast of Tehran University. The translation is adjusted to Iranian conditions. A publication in Iran requires

 

2.

this. It makes the text reach more people but limits what I can write. Norwegian is a small language. My father don’t speak proper. He writes

and speaks Norwegian but he talks differently from how he writes. Proper Norwegian, I never learned. What kind of language I used before I

started writing, I do not remember. In Haukerød we didn’t trust people who spoke differently. Somewhere between Sandefjord and Tønsberg they

went from “ho” to “hu” (which means “she”). Literature is limitation. Limits create form. Not everybody can participate. A readable text is a

text you do not master. The text in this book is typeset in Mercury Text G1 10 on 13.5 points by Martin Lundell. The typeface was designed by

 

3.

the New York-based company Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Inc. in 2000, commissioned by the newspaper chain, New Times Media. As with Times

New Roman, which this manuscript is written in, it is designed to be used in newspapers. Mercury Text should be adapted to conditions created by

the climate at the places where the chain’s newspapers are printed – for instance the humidity in Phoenix affects the paper’s ability to absorb ink

in a completely different way to the humidity in Miami, and thus impacts on how sharp the font image appears. It also could be adapted to various

printing techniques and paper qualitys. The solution was a typeface where the sibling members of the type shared the same underlying geometry, but

 

4.

offered different degrees of darkness on the page. This text is type set in grade one of four, the slimmest. The book was printed on 100

gram Munken Premium 1.3 Cream at Livonia Print Sia in Riga, where the following people were involved in the production: Andris

Bistrovs, Girts Balodis, Ildze Steinerte, Renars Vinters, Rimma Mihailova, Sigita Stilve og Valdis Rudzitis. As usual, we do not

know the names of those who produced the materials the book is made from. Quality is just a quality. Friction is a quality. This

caesura is 18,2 cm long:                 1 When you read it you will make a 182 seconds long break, what you hear then is a part of the poem.

 

 

NOTE

Proposition: On the basis of your own height (X cm), you write an autobiographical book. The book consists of X number of texts. The texts are created by making X number of recordings lasting X seconds and then transcribing them. All words and all sounds you recognize, such as birds, cars, slamming doors or voices shall be registered, unedited. The times and locations are noted. Arrange the texts chronologically. It is allowed to make more than X number of recordings / transcripts and choose from the single texts.

 

 

Epigraphs and explanation to
The Name – a poem to be read aloud in Danish and Norwegian

                                            A world
                          where the defence of our security
                            begins far from the Danish soil.

                                                  *

We do not measure success by the number of casualties on the other side.
      The scientific value is so small that we do not use those figures.
            There is a culture to carry away the wounded and dead
                                    as quickly as possible.
              Neither will it be controlled closely to confirm the loss.
                        We will never know what the facts are.
        Then you would have to follow up with heat-seeking cameras.

                                                  *

Norwegian and Danish soldiers and 577 named Afghan civilians killed in the ISAF forces operations in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2010. The names are presented as I found them. Many Afghans only have first names. The epigraphs comes from the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s New Year speech of 2009 and from an interview with Kjetil Eide, spokesman of the Norwegian military’s operational headquarters, printed in Aftenposten 26/1 2010.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paal Bjelke Andersen is a Norwegian poet and editor. His works include The Grefsen Address and Dugnad (Flamme Forlag). He read at the recent 3:AM Maintenant - Ny Poesi: New Norwegian Poetry night at the Rich Mix alongside Jenny Hval, Endre Ruset and Audun Mortensen.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Sunday, October 10th, 2010.