Author Caroline Albertine Minor explores how address functions in literary works – the interrogated "you" that runs through the text. The workshop investigates who this addressee is, how the figure is constructed and animated, and what significance it holds for the text's dynamics and impact.
Participants work collaboratively with texts on the boundary between letter, poem, and note. Through analyses of writers such as Frank O'Hara, Sebastian Nathan, Edith Södergran, Forough Farrokhzad, James Schuyler, and Patricia Cavalli, you will write your own texts in the realm between the intimate and the ecstatic. Central questions are explored: What does it mean to write to someone? How is a portrait constructed without becoming theft – or worse? Drawing on Iris Murdoch's idea of attention as a moral question, we examine whether one can see what one loves.
The workshop alternates between brief writing exercises, readings of concrete examples, and constructive collaboration among participants. Caroline Albertine Minor is a Danish author and literary translator, debut author of Pura vida (2013), award-winning short story collection Velsignelser (2017), Hummerens skjold (2020), and first poetry collection Nivå Bugt Strandenge (2024). Most recently, she published the novel Den forelskede ven – a kaleidoscopic exploration of ecstasy, friendship, and the artist's power.
