5-2018

Guest Curator Issue: Waves, Languages and Text Stripes

The fifth issue of the year has been compiled by our first guest curator Marko Niemi, Nokturno’s editor-in-chief from 2006 to 2014. The issue includes works from authors already familiar to Nokturno’s readers as well as by some new names who are doing interesting things on various border zones between poetry/text and, for instance, visual art, sound art and computer programming.

In this issue there’s a selection of book art by poet and bookbinder Kaija Rantakari. In the fragments that she uses in her collages, one can see resemblances with her poetry, for instance with her newest book Koko meren laajuus (published by Poesia), that was published earlier in the autumn.

Ragnhildur Jóhanns is also working on tactile materiality in her work. She uses text and books to create many kinds of poetic objects and collages. Here we see a visual piece that consists of small strips of paper.

Taneli Viljanen is a writer who also works on the field of sound art. The sound piece miten aallot lähtisivät liikkeelle siitä kohdasta johon hän katoaisi presented here combines human voice and sounds of sea to create a hypnotic soundscape.

In her newest collection of poetry, l’usage du mot (2017), Cia Rinne continues in the footsteps of her earlier books – zaroum (2001) and notes for soloists (2009) – and their multilingual, minimalist aesthetics, where extremely small nyances make a very big difference. We get to see a few samples from the newest book at Nokturno.

Nokturno’s current editor in chief Virpi Vairinen explores the unpredictable and rapidly ageing nature of technology in her poem Katoava, using the marquee html tag, which once used to provide an easy way to create simple web animations, but is nowadays deprecated. The poem works differently on different browsers and different platforms: in some environments it might look like a kinetic poem, whereas in others it might not.

We also get a glimpse of papers of a performing sound poet, as Ernesto Estrella Cózar presents scores for two sound poems. Estrella is a member of the Berlin Sound Poets Quoi Tête collective along with Tomomi Adachi, Jelle Meander and Cia Rinne.

In Oppen Do Down by Jim Andrews, there’s no predetermined score or structure. Instead, it works as an intrument: the user can start and stop looping soundtracks that together form a piece of sound art.

 

Nokturno thanks Marko for this great selection of new poetry! Our brand new tradition of invited Guest Curators continues next Fall.

Editor´s Note: this years second Digital residence begins soon! Tuija Välipakka starts with her project One Hundred Red Things in Summer 2018 on 1st of November.

We have a year-round open call for new poetry. Send us your poems or anything poetry related that finds its home in the digital world! Deadline for next issue 17th of November and the email is .

(Image: detail from artist’s book At last by Kaija Rantakari)

Works

Runoja

Runoja monikielisestä kokoelmasta l’usage du mot.
Poems from the multilingual collection l’usage du mot.

Textual