“Once Was”
Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Åse Margrethe Hansen: Everything about the poem inspired me; the sun beating through the blinds, the shimmering child, the seriousness of it all, in the midst of light. Poet Adina Schoem: Åse got right to the heart of the matter, I think, by not creating something overtly whimsical or baby-centric. I didn’t expect this, but I like it.
Artist Åse Margrethe Hansen was born in 1952, in Hammerfest, Norway. The colors, climate, and the landscapes of the Arctic profoundly influence her art. She currently lives in Oslo. Poet Adina Schoem‘s chapbook, Cryptographs in a field of goats, won the Palooka Press Prize in 2016. She was a 2017 Fellow at the Jewish Arts and Culture Lab in Cleveland, where she wrote on the strangeness of pregnancy.