Biarritz

Twenty Bookmarks is a result of Production & Workflow class of Graphic Design Department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Ba1 Class of 2026.

"The impossible takes a little longer. [pen scribbling]"

Presented at Kransen in Borgerhout, 1—3 March 2024, with an exhibition titled Dog Ears and a remote reading by fellow-Stockholmian artist Dave Allen.

Words gathered from The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1986), Natural Enemies of Books (MMS, 2020), Non credere di avere dei diritti (Libreria delle donne di Milano, 1987), Dada Cannibalistic Manifesto (Francis Picabia, 1920) and WITCH (Rebecca Tamás, 2019). A first version of this poem/pamphlet was made in the context of See What I Mean, a workshop by Phil Baber at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, october 2024.

"Waterslides is a falling and plunging, short starts and stops aided by movement, until we splash, climb and plunge again. Each sliding is the same but different—with each descent new expectations and thoughts swirl, shifting focus and gaining new insights or blockages. Waterslides are brief moments of remembering, remembering as a present tense activity, one that happens as we think of it, projected on our now. The waterslide is the moment of past and present working in tandem, a movement of repeating, revisiting and remembering all at once.”

Written by nvk 2021-2023. Dedicated to Judi, MM & TNN.

A version of these poems was published as an audio work through Ignota Press’ The Mountain (2023) and included in a reading with James Loop on Montez Press Radio (2023). nvk would like to thank Jan Matthé, Stine Sampers and Michelangelo Miccolis for their patience & love.

This book was first presented at Kransen in Antwerp, May 6th 2023, with a performance by Sassy (costume by Rosa Schützendorf). Printed and bound at Risiko Press, Borgerhout. Cover image by nvk. Fonts: Adonis, Garamond Pro. Limited to 150 copies.

128x195mm, 16p., stapled, cover: green, yellow and black risoprint on 160gsm caramel paper, inside: black and blue riso on 120gsm Munken Pure paper.

Assembled and copied by Jan Matthé at Permeke Library Antwerp, September—October 2022. Edited at Kransen, printed in Borgerhout in an edition of 200, bound by De Wrikker in Berchem. Released on the occasion of Permeke draait door met Risiko Press, Sunday 27 November 2022 at Permeke Library, with readings and performances by Tina Schott, Jóhanna Kristbjörg Sigurðardóttir, Stefanie Alexandra, Sis Matthé, Ria Pacquée, Jan Matthé, Clodagh Kinsella and Roman Hiele. Thanks to Christel Kumpen for the invitation, Allon McKaye for the Saturday and Toni Matthé for the unicorn with a heartshaped tail.

From its anatomy and autonomy to its death and diet, this issue focuses on the motif Body and all its meanings, direct and indirect, for instance as in relation to human and non-human bearers of bodies, its inhabitants like bacteria and organs, its social, medical and juridical conditions, its intoxications, chemical processes, traumas, transitions, well-being, replacements, weaknesses, and its opposites.

Contributors: Adam Dickinson, Andrea Éva Győri, A.L. Steiner, Alexandra Ivanciu, Barak Zemer, Bernhard Willhelm, Clara Lena Langenbach, Clémentine Bedos, Constance DeJong, Daisy Hildyard, Fanny Howe, Hanne Loreck, Hasti, Holly Hunter, Ingrid Jäger, Jannis Marwitz, Jess Arndt, Johannes Kuczera, Jolanta Nowaczyk, Henriette Maier, Mag Gabbert, Maja Smrekar, Manuel Vason, R.I.P. Germain, Rebekka Endler, Sonja Yakovleva 

Within the format of a magazine, each page of Pfeil represents the floor, walls, or ceiling which together create an imagined room displaying a printed exhibition. Each issue is dedicated to a specific word, and artists are invited and given space to work on and with this term, and to construct or deconstruct the architecture around it. Combined, the contributions transform into an organic display surrounding the leitmotif.

There is no pause without prior exertion, and this issue of the magazine explores rest and all its associated contexts and contradictions. Amidst increasing environmental pollution, a tenuous global political climate, and a performance-oriented society demanding ever greater productivity, the balance between rest and labour becomes skewed. Pausing carries the risk of falling behind, but this risk can be mitigated by knowing when to rest. This issue examines rest as activity and as resistance. It questions how the individual body, in cohesion with a community, can generate weight through relaxation and distribute it. 

Contributors: Asma Ben Slama, Camila Cañeque, Christiane Blattmann, Eileen Myles, Federico Tosi, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Hanne Loreck, Hans-Christian Dany, Hyemin Yang, Ingrid Jäger, Jenni Bohn, Jochen Lempert, Julia Schulze Darup, Mariona Berenguer, Matthias Schubert, Mikołaj Sobczak, Mirene Arsanios, Nat Raha, Nicholas Grafia, Niclas Riepshoff, Omar Hahad, Sarah Drath, Stacy Skolnik, Thomas Laprade, Vir Andres Hera

Within the format of a magazine, each page of Pfeil represents the floor, walls, or ceiling which together create an imagined room displaying a printed exhibition. Each issue is dedicated to a specific word, and artists are invited and given space to work on and with this term, and to construct or deconstruct the architecture around it. Combined, the contributions transform into an organic display surrounding the leitmotif.

Hardly War, first published in the USA in 2016 and finally published in the UK in 2025, splices the personal and political to dizzying effect in a poetry fluid with forms and genres including reportage, memoir, opera libretto, archival photos and drawings. Using artefacts from Choi’s father, a professional documentary photographer during the Korean and Vietnam wars, she explores her paternal relationship and heritage. Here poetry and geopolitics are inseparable twin sisters, conjoined to the belly of a warring empire.

Choi’s KOR-US Trilogy (Hardly War and the subsequent DMZ Colony and Mirror Nation) brings us a new poetic language to learn. Suggestive and subtle in its connections and allusions, there is an exhilarating freedom in its playful form, all while looking straight at the brutality of colonialism and dictatorship.

By one of the most transcendent poets of this generation, a remarkable collection of prose poems that explores themes of love, pain, isolation, and connection. In this self-eulogy written in the final years of Mahmoud Darwish's life, Palestine becomes a metaphor for the injustice and pain of our contemporary moment.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was one of the most acclaimed poets in the Arab world. His poetry collections include Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? and A River Dies of Thirst (Archipelago Books). In 2001 Darwish was awarded the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.

The fruitfull sence is an excerpt from Lucretius’s masterwork De rerum natura, in which the poet marvels at the sensory world. Optical illusions, the drift of smell, the juicy mechanics of taste. All animated by Lucy Hutchinson’s gorgeous 1640 translation, which renders the original Latin into bouncy English pentameter. The first publication in our new series, Sensory Dispatches.

A sweeping centennial edition of Iran’s iconic twentieth-century poet of liberty, whose work shaped modern Persian poetry. Known for his political engagement and deep humanism, and his pivotal role in Persian poetry’s modernist turn toward free verse, Ahmad Shamlou (1925–2000) crafted poems that carried both lyrical intimacy and cultural force. A central, defiant voice in Iran’s modern literary history, Shamlou championed the power of poetry as an instrument of liberation. His work, long suppressed in his homeland, remains urgent for readers everywhere confronting censorship, exile, and erasure. This bilingual edition honors Shamlou’s centennial with the most expansive selection of his poetry to date in English, encompassing his wide thematic range: from fierce protest to intimate love, mythic storytelling to existential reflection. Niloufar Talebi’s vibrant translations and deeply researched commentary shine new light on Shamlou’s legacy and his relevance today.

Alice Notley has consistently peopled her poetry with the voices of those around her: kids, friends, husbands, strangers, and the dead. Thirty-Odd Functions of Voice in the Poetry of Alice Notley offers an array of interpretations of this technique. While not aspiring to completeness, and limiting its attention to one formal aspect of a single author's work, this poem-essay sketches relationships between intimate speech and literary language.