Review of Utøya Thereafter, by Harry Man and Endre Ruset, pub. Hercules Editions 2021

This is an extract from a longer work, “Deretter” (“thereafter”), written to commemorate the 69 victims of the murders on the island of Utøya, Norway, in 2011. The Norwegian work has 69 poems, one for each victim, plus “Prosjektil” (Projectile), a poem written by Ruset after the murderer’s trial and based on forensic evidence concerning the movement of bullets through the body. This pamphlet has a condensed version of that poem, in both Norwegian and English plus 25 of the 69, in English only. 

The poems for the victims are written in the shape of faces, not very obviously so, but more so that the face suggests itself, resolving out of the words, as one reads. No two shapes are exactly alike; I don’t know if they were perhaps based on newspaper head-and-shoulders shots of the persons concerned, but they look as if they might be. Needless to say, this makes it quite hard to quote meaningfully from them, because the impact is carried in the overall shape on the page as well as the words. What one can say is that many are based on personal details, which, like the different face-shapes, individualise the subjects and bring them, often achingly, to life along with those who mourn their loss:
 

( Read more... )