Tikilluarit
The text of the book is a sonnet (reproduced below) from a series written during a winter residency at Upernavik Museum, Greenland. The word ‘tikilluarit’ means ‘welcome’ in Kalaallisut, or West Greenlandic. In this edition, the text of the poem is deliberately occluded, trapped within the binding. The designer, Roni Gross, writes: ‘The poem speaks about a person trying to mimic the sound of a word spoken by another person by placing a hand around the throat of the speaker. The spine side of the book was made to be as visually important as the text block, which serves in effect, as the throat of the book. The text moves up and into the spine as if going down the throat. The exposed sewing is similar to the anatomy of the vocal cords.’
The poem with its original title ‘The Hunter Teaches Me To Speak’ was first published in Modern Poetry in Translation, later also in Nancy Campbell’s poetry collection Disko Bay.
A collaboration with Manhattan-based Z’roah Press, whose mission is to give the reader not only the visual experience of a book, but also to encourage engagement with texts on a haptic, experiential level.
book details
Publisher: Z’roah Press, New York City, 2012. Letterpress text on Mitsumata paper, designed and printed by Roni Gross. Modified accordion binding executed by Biruta Auna using calfskin. The deluxe edition of the book additionally comes with a unique wooden sound sculpture crafted by Peter Schell, and a waxed linen wrap to house both book and sound sculpture.
Tikilluarit was created for the An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street exhibition, which began in 2012, exhibiting nationally and internationally until 2015. The exhibition showcases a collection of artist’s books and broadsides in response to the explosion of a car bomb in Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic centre of bookselling in Baghdad, in March 2007.
The hunter teaches me to speak
I place my fingers round his neck and feel
his gorge rise – or is he swallowing
his tongue? He wants to teach me the word
for ‘welcome’. Suddenly, he’s trembling:
his larynx rumbles, then his breath is gone.
He asks me to remember those vibrations,
and, anxious as a nurse who takes a pulse,
touches my throat to judge its contortions.
Will I ever learn these soft uvulars?
I’m so eager, I forget that the stress
always falls on the second syllable.
My echo of his welcome is grotesque.
He laughs, an exorcism of guillemets,
dark flocks of sound I’ll never net, or say.