DOUBLE HEARTBEAT! Double poetry book launch with Leif Holmstrand and Francisco Muñoz Soler

DUBBLA HJÄRTSLAG! (DOUBLE HEARTBEAT!) Double poetry book launch at IASPIS: “Anthology 1978–2023” by Francisco Muñoz Soler (Málaga) and “community: poems and lyrical drama 1998–2024” by Leif Holmstrand (Malmö). A small performance by Leif Holmstrand.

“community: poems and lyrical drama 1998–2024” by Leif Holmstrand; publisher’s description:

COMMUNITY is a large poem or collage text incorporating several genres, but primarily POETRY and LYRICAL DRAMA. Some parts of the poem have previously been published in different forms, and some plays have long been performed and recently reworked for reading. Now, twenty-five years of writing have resulted in a virus mosaic or kaleidoscopic weave. Much of it is autobiographical, and most of the material draws on elements from internet communities and chatrooms. A few sections: A ROOM ON THE THIRD FLOOR was tenderly written for Bo I. Cavefors and deals with shared experiences of prostitution. THE TWITCHING HANDS contains porn titles once meticulously collected by Oscar Guermouche for conceptual art projects about masculinity and desire. VOICES LIKE FLIES AROUND OUR FINE HEADS is based on internet hate against Yoko Ono and has been staged by theater mutation at Skåne’s Art Association. RECIPE was first released by Chateaux Press and has also been presented as a text-sound composition. All of this is now transformed and integrated into a new overarching whole.

COMMUNITY addresses the fragmented present, literary history, distant people, and the diseases and losses within the author’s own family. Well-known epic poems like Abol-Qasem Ferdousi’s SHAHNAMEH, John Milton’s PARADISE LOST, and James Merrill’s THE CHANGING LIGHTS AT SANDOVER are addressed. Dated diary entries are overlaid on verse material that has been expanded since 1998. It deals with the world and how it impacts us, both collectively and individually. Poets and writers – acclaimed and whose works are borrowed from, in COMMUNITY – include Maurice Maeterlinck, Deborah Gordon, Eugène Marais, Stéphane Mallarmé, Gaspara Stampa, and Aeschylus. Additionally, various unnamed and often quarrelsome people on dating sites and Facebook, along with sick voices, COVID, Alzheimer’s, ALS, pancreatic cancer, and Parkinson’s are part of the text.

COMMUNITY is mostly divided into two columns. Easiest would be to read a block from the left column first and then a block from the right column. Which is also most rewarding. But to read the text in two columns simultaneously is also rewarding – harmonies and complementary contradictions become apparent, and a different kind of wholeness emerges. COMMUNITY also exists as a previous poetry book (a different one) and will be rewritten into a novel in the future (in about a decade).

LEIF HOLMSTRAND (b. 1972) is an artist, musician, and writer. They work in an anti-straight manner with themes from art and literary history – and with waste, trash, and contemporary pop culture references. Holmstrand has published around forty books, and COMMUNITY is a new poetry book with prose-like lyrical sections. The most recently published poetry collection was NOT THE WORLD (Bonniers) and the most recent novel was THE MAPMAKER’S TOWER (Pequod).

“Anthology 1978–2023” by Francisco Muñoz Soler, translator Thomas Almqvist´s words:

“Elocuencia de silencios” (Eloquence of Silence) is the title in Spanish, with poems often written from an international perspective. There is also a protest against the fragmentation of time, space, and modernity. The tone can be melancholic, which has to do with love lost. When he writes about the absent love, there is a tendency to idealize love. The poems are both socially and politically conscious, infused with pain and sorrow over the decay that permeates our contemporary world. His poems merge with life, the currents of time, and the external world, becoming critiques of society and civilization. They are often short, elegantly concentrated, and simultaneously deep and multifaceted.

He also writes about alienation in modern existence, giving the poems an intense nerve and strong momentum. Many of them address life in Spain today, but we also get glimpses of the world outside. The poems consistently contain a sharp critique of nationalism, religious traditionalism, and fanaticism. We gain also a broad picture of social developments in Spain’s recent past. With his poetry, he aims to raise awareness of a society plagued by apathy, cruelty, intolerance, and a lack of humanity. He delves into topics like the tragedy of refugee flows, institutionalized terror, and human rights violations.

When I interview him about what poetry generally means to him, he responds that for him, it is a way of living and being, as natural as breathing. Unsurprisingly, the poets who have influenced him the most belong to Spain’s Generation of ’27, the country’s second Golden Age, particularly Federico García Lorca, Miguel Hernández, and Luís Cernuda, along with Antonio Machado. Spanish classics like Francisco Quevedo, Luís de Góngora, San Juan de la Cruz, Fray Luís de León, and Santa Teresa are also mentioned. From Latin America, he highlights César Vallejo and Pablo Neruda. Charles Baudelaire and Rainer Maria Rilke are also noted, before the list becomes too long.

Welcome!