Issue 14: Linn Hansén
Turn to history - excerpt
What is history here is the history of her she had trousers.
What is history she was sharing that is generous but is it history.
No one sees you from the balcony that is a fact it is not history.
Love arises that is not history it is economy.
One can look pleasant for weeks before anyone tells you to stop.
History should be able to answer questions.
Finally the troops reached France is that history no it is geography.
What is history history is centralized marinas are therefore not historical.
What is both most and least historical rocks are.
The ice age is a period characterized by ice an invasion is not.
How many people throughout history spoke English and how many lived by the coast.
Two things are important to the humankind is it women or is it digitalization.
1934 was most difficult.
1979 was difficult too.
History is immortal.
The human unfortunately mortal.
The family got bigger and bigger but called each other increasingly seldom is that history no it is bad communication.
A horse can love and remember and mourn a human or another horse to death is that history no it’s psychology.
Watercolours are historical.
Oil is too.
A shoe fits perfectly is that history no that is luck.
You find time to both swim and shop is that luck no that is good planning.
Unions are stubborn not historical.
Thanks for all the letters that is not history that is a reply.
A historical moment can last up to an hour and a half.
If it is longer it is a date.
A historical period concerns quite a lot of people.
An era concerns almost everyone.
The difference between an event and a moment is that it strikes you and that it has consequences.
The historical event was most common during the nineteenth century.
History is encyclopaedic and alphabetic first come the apes Big bang the Black Death the Bronze Age Cicero D-Day the Evolution the Finnish Winter War Fordism the French Revolution gold standard Hastings indulgences et cetera.
Literature supports the idea that many people have suffered.
By turns suffered and done other things.
What is it like to be human is it safe or is it hard.
One says that something terrible is going to happen then something terrible happens that is bad luck.
Someone falls off a swing or a war comes that is not back luck that is history.
The Bible is a footnote to Plato.
The Finnish ferry is a footnote to the kayak and the irritation is a footnote to the real fury.
The lamb is a footnote to a dodo’s child.
Memory is poorer but more trustworthy than an anecdote.
A déjà vu is shorter but more surprising than a memory.
The nobility is historical as well as the monarchy while a déjà vu is the opposite of history.
The following things have burnt throughout history parliaments buildings forests hearts common people’s houses whole cities.
Just after the telescope came the night sky.
During the Antiquity one felt nostalgic for the Middle Ages.
During the Middle Ages one didn’t know that one was in the Middle Ages but didn’t think they were somewhere else either.
During the Renaissance one felt nostalgic for the Antiquity but instead there came industrialism.
Since the thirties there has been a younger generation and to the younger generation all that matters is stainless steel.
Linn Hansén lives in Gothenburg, Sweden, and works as an editor of the cultural journal Glänta (glanta.org) and curates Göteborg poetry festival. Her first book of poetry, Ta i trä (Touch wood), was published in 2008, and the second one, Gå till historien (Turn to history), was out in 2013
