BLOOD:
The Poems and Archive of R. Broby-Johansen
- Edited and designed by Line-Gry Hørup
- Photographs by Johannes Schwartz
- Published by Kunstverein Publishing
- 2020, 432 pp. (colour & b/w ill.)
- 19 × 23.5 cm, softcover with dustjacket
- Edition of 400
- ISBN 978-94-90629-24-3
BLOOD is the first comprehensive English translation of the poems of Danish art historian, communist activist and writer R. Broby-Johansen. Translated, edited and designed by Line-Gry Hørup, Broby-Johansen’s poems are accompanied by a series of full colour photographs by Amsterdam photographer Johannes Schwartz, which document the pair’s trip to Brody-Johansen’s recently established archive. So recent, that they were in fact the first to view it.
On the title page of a first edition of BLOD. Beneath the subtitle “expressionist poems,” I find a handwritten note from Broby, addressed to no-one in particular and dated 25 November 1922, his birthday: “I have written these poems without reason, I simply could not stop myself. I have published these poems because I think they could have erasing force, morally speaking: a gory time seen with healthy eyes without smut in the eyelids of the piquant, and without hypocrisy. Supporters of the whoremonger-morals might feel beaten by the bat. I hate all aesthetics. Because it’s the front-page. And I do not want to front-page. I want to crash all facades. I want to revolutionise. And then I will build.”
—Line-Gry Hørup, ‘Notes to the Reader,’ in BLOOD, 2020, p. 40.