Welcome to the latest Hercules Editions crowdsourcing campaign
Utøya Thereafter
Poems in Memory of the 2011 Norway Attacks
by Harry Man and Endre Ruset
signed limited edition of 300
Hercules Editions is pleased to announce the publication of Utøya Thereafter: Poems in Memory of the 2011 Norway Attacks by Harry Man and Endre Ruset
Over the space of four and a half years, and through the pandemic, Norwegian poet Endre Ruset has been working with UK poet Harry Man to write poems in memory of those who were killed during the tragic events of the Oslo bombing and the mass shooting on Utøya Island on 22 July 2011. Rather than write a conventional book of elegies, they were interested in preserving some of the values held by these young and politically active teenagers and young adults. They finally arrived at the idea of concrete elegies.
These poems, written in the shape of faces, draw upon a long history of traditional elegy that travels as far back as Virgil’s Georgics. Additionally, Man and Ruset blend found poetry from eyewitness testimony, court documents and material used in the 22nd July Centre in Oslo,
so it is the victims and survivors who are brought to the foreground.
“For the past ten years, the conversation around mass shootings has focussed on the perpetrators with little attention paid to the real human cost. One of the ways in which we might begin to repair that damage is if we refocus our attention on the world around us – we turn to poetry in times of extreme emotion for this purpose; to help us to make sense of what Douglas Dunn referred to as the otherwise ‘resistant’ subject of grief. This book's intention is to continue that longstanding tradition of empathy and to exercise poetry's capacity to remind ourselves that even in our individual solitude, profoundly, we can still share in one other's humanity.”
Harry Man
The book is introduced by Ingvild Folkvord, Professor in the Department of Language and Literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and also includes a conversation between Harry Man and Endre Ruset about the challenges of writing from grief, collaboration and translation.
We rely on the generous assistance of our readers, so we hope you will support this new publication. We are offering some exciting incentives to donors, including an opportunity to have your name listed in the book (a regular feature of all our publications; a way of making our readers integral to the project), a chance to receive a copy of two poems not included in the text, and an option to receive Deretter, the Norwegian-language edition of the full-length book, beautifully produced by Flamme (see here for more information). The campaign runs until 25 June 2021.
Pledge 1
£25
For a pledge of £25, your name will be included in the list of donors in the book, and you will receive a copy of the publication postage free.
Included rewards
A copy of the book with your name listed as a donor
Pledge 2
£35
For a pledge of £35, you will receive a print of two unpublished poems from the ‘Utøya Thereafter’ sequence, not included in the book. In addition, your name will be included in the list of donors in the book, and you will receive both print and book postage free.
Included rewards
A copy of the book with your name listed as a donor
A print of two poems from the ‘Utøya Thereafter’ sequence by Harry Man and Endre Ruset
Pledge 3
£60
For a pledge of £60 you will receive a copy of Deretter, the book of the complete project in Norwegian, published by Flamme, as well as a copy of Utøya Thereafter. You will also receive a print of two unpublished poems from the ‘Utøya Thereafter’ sequence, not included in the UK edition.
Your name will be included in the list of donors in Utøya Thereafter and you will receive both publications and print postage-free.
Included rewards
A copy of the book with your name listed as a donor
A print of two poems from the ‘Utøya Thereafter’ sequence by Harry Man and Endre Ruset
A copy of Deretter, the Norwegian edition of the book published by Flamme