During the 1980s, memories of Swedish concrete poetry were faint indeed. I discovered the leading figure of the genre, Åke Hodell, in the school library and decided to seek him out. This interview took place in spring 1983.
This interview was first published in Swedish in the fanzine Kaspar Hauser, issue 1, 1983.
Can art take any form? Are there no limits to artistic expression? These are questions that have been asked of young artists throughout the years. Whenever a new art form emerges, it is invariably met with incomprehension, ridicule and scorn from both critics and the public.
One such art form is concrete poetry, which was popular in the 1960s. One of its leading figures was Åke Hodell. However, he differed from others who merely mocked conventional art. Åke Hodell never did anything without a serious underlying meaning.
He came to be regarded as one of the leading concrete poets not because of his provocations, but because of his search for a language that was his own.
We met at Café Blå Porten in Djurgården, Stockholm on a sunny afternoon for an interview. It was a meeting between master and admirer. It was also a generational meeting; he was 64 and I was 17.
Åke started out as a military pilot. During the Second World War, he crashed while flying over Skåne.
According to the accident investigation board’s calculations, he had a one in ten thousand chance of survival. Against all odds, he did survive, but he had to give up flying and spent almost two years in Lund Hospital.
How did you start writing poetry?
– It’s a very special story. At this hospital, there was a very strict head nurse. She was a tall, straight woman with slicked-back, centre-parted hair and large brown eyes. Everyone at the hospital was afraid of her, even the doctors. She ruled the hospital like a dictator.
– One morning, while I was lying there reading a popular Jules Verne magazine, she came up to me, snatched the magazine out of my hands without warning and said, “Hodell shouldn’t read such rubbish; Hodell should read real literature!”
– I was very offended by that. The next day, she put two volumes of Dostoyevsky‘s “Crime and Punishment” on my bedside table and said, ‘Hodell, read these!’ This angered me even more, so I didn’t touch the books and didn’t even look at them. Instead, I bought some semi-pornographic magazines, such as the innocent Parisienne and Cocktail. Every time she came in, I held up those magazines and held them really tight! But she didn’t seem to care. A month went by and I still hadn’t looked at the books.
Åke lights one cigarette after another and talks with great enthusiasm and vivid imagery. He has long, thoughtful answers to everything. Sixty-four years gives you a lot of experience…
– One night, there was a lot of unrest in the air. The Americans were flying over the Skåne coast towards Germany to bomb. It was nerve-wracking lying there tied up in bed because if they navigated incorrectly and dropped a bomb on Lund, I wouldn’t stand much of a chance.
– To escape that nervousness, I picked up the first part of “Crime and Punishment” and started reading. It’s not a difficult literary text at all, but I remember really struggling to get through the first page. I was only really used to two languages: one technical and one military. However, it became easier as I progressed, and then page after page flew by. I lay there reading and didn’t realise that night had passed and morning had come. Suddenly, she was standing at the edge of the bed. I didn’t have time to close the book or hide it under the covers. She caught me red-handed! She didn’t say anything, just smiled slightly and left. That’s how I got into reading literature!
– I started with Dostoyevsky, who became very important to me. I read everything he wrote. Then I started reading literature from that era – the 1940s. Dagerman, Lindegren, and so on. I then felt the need to start writing myself.
The fact that I started writing concrete poetry was mainly due to the language. I wrote my first collection of poems, “Flyende pilot” (Flying Pilot), in 1953. At that time, I accepted language as it was and had no mistrust of it. However, I developed this mistrust soon after my debut. All languages have their inherent values, which are often shaped by society and incorporated into the language. I had never considered this before; I simply used language, employing a particular style for poetry — a kind of artistic language.
– It was my distrust of language that led me to start over from the beginning, with the smallest syllables and sounds. I felt stuck in this language. It was liberating to leave the modernist language that poets still write in today. I wanted to experiment with a new language that was my own, rather than something I had picked up from various sources.
Åke Hodell’s first collection of poems is about nuclear weapons. “Ikaros Död” (The Death of Icarus) tells the story of a bomber pilot who disobeys orders and crashes into the sea after being ordered to drop a hydrogen bomb.
After his first two books, Åke abandoned conventional poetry. The idea for “Igevär” came about because he lived next to the castle in Gamla Stan (Old Town in Stockholm) in the 1950s. Every two hours, the guard would shout ‘igevär’ so that it could be heard far and wide.
– I thought that people only saw it as a show and didn’t consider what it really meant. However, if they saw it taken to the extreme, perhaps they would suddenly consider the meaning of the word.
So he wrote a book consisting of twelve pages of ‘i’, interspersed with ‘ge’ and followed by thirty-six pages of ‘ä’ and a single ‘r’ at the end.
– However, it turned out to be much more than just a provocation. The ‘i’s became soldiers standing at attention, while the ‘ä’s became soldiers sitting with their backpacks on. It had become an image. Then, a few of us performed it on stage and it became sound as well. It became what concrete poetry is all about: working visually with images and sound. The book definitely had a meaning; it wasn’t just done for its own sake.
– This caused a huge stir when the book was released. The reviewers had to take me seriously because I had already published two books. There was a huge debate about the book that lasted for a couple of years. People wrote that ‘anyone could do this’ – but the art lies in coming up with it!
Between 1966 and 1967, Åke Hodell sat on the editorial board of the avant-garde magazine Gorilla. However, only two issues were published because most of the editorial staff wanted to form a pop band instead. This became Gunder Hägg, for which Åke was responsible for the lighting. However, he left because he thought they were terrible. The others continued and later became Blå Tåget.
– After publishing my autobiography “Självbiografi” in 1967, I was actually going to quit. In it, I settle accounts with European culture, philosophy and religion – well, pretty much everything, including myself. So there’s nothing left. I should have remained silent, but since I’m still alive, I’ve returned to language. Not the language I used in “Flyende Pilot”, but a simple, clear language.
At first glance, Åke Hodell’s books seem to have been written by a madman. Those who have never encountered anything like them before either burst out laughing or run away in anger. Åke says this is basically due to people’s insecurity and uncertainty; they become confused when their preconceptions are turned on their head. This happens when you turn concepts such as ‘this is what art should look like’ on their head.
– It’s always been like that. Just think of when Picasso and Braque presented Cubism in 1907 — it was incredibly revolutionary. Everyone rejected it as terrible.
– People are used to things looking a certain way and become terribly confused when they suddenly don’t.
Åke Hodell’s poetry, sound and image art has a lot in common with the work of later rock musicians such as Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention, as well as industrial music bands such as Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. One Swedish band who say they are inspired by Åke is Dom Dummaste. I asked Åke if he thought rock music could play the same role as his own art.
– From what I’ve heard of rock music, I think there are many different kinds, first of all. There’s commercial hard rock, etc. – I think that’s awful. It’s built entirely for commercial purposes. Then there are rock bands that really want to innovate and do something different. Rock music needs to innovate too. They can’t just keep doing the same things all the time. I see rock as the language of your generation, quite simply. If I hear that there’s something new, a new feeling or new content, I immediately listen to rock.
– I was really into The Beatles when they first appeared, and perhaps most of all The Mothers of Invention, because they were doing some of the same things that we were doing with concrete poetry. There was a sense of community in the expression itself.
Åke Hodell has always been on the move. He has never stopped and thought, ‘I’m finished,’ but has constantly sought new forms and means of expression. He has now returned to conventional language, but he does not write conventional books. In September, his first ‘real’ novel will be published, in which he recounts these years and explains his actions. However, it will probably not be a mere retrospective, but rather another step in his development.
Although Åke Hodell is too old to be considered young and daring, he has always been at the forefront of young, angry art. He is as important to the new generation as the original punks were.
Written by
Text by Magnus Nilsson, interview by Magnus Nilsson and Per Drougge.