http://www.wordpharmacy.com http://www.mortensondergaard.net

One of the most considered, intricate and physically beautiful poetry works I've come across in recent years, Morten Sondergaard's 'wordpharmacy' is so sophisticated conceptually and wonderfully executed it really blows me away. Morten is a remarkably interesting poet, and with the wordpharmacy he really has cemented himself, in my view, as one of the best poetical practitioners in Europe. The work of Morten, like Eirikur Orn Norddahl, Cia Rinne, Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson, Paal Bjelke Andersen, Jenny Hval and I could go on, is so indicative of the width and depth of contemporary Scandinavian poetics right night.

I was lucky enough to be given one of the wordpharmacies by Morten, who I interviewed for the Maintenant series. To view it in person is really to come across something original and wonderful.

"By rewriting already existing instructions for the use of medicine, Wordpharmacy playfully intertwines the structure of language with the healing principles of various medicaments. Like pills, language is something to be consumed by the body, and in turn it does not only affect our conceptions of things, but it also comes to designate our very corporal movability in the world. Consequently, words are not only something we consume, they are refractory entities that in turn define and consume us. Wordpharmacy can be seen as a poetical gesture endeavouring to let words work their magic from within the body itself."