Eighteen established writers, one from each city/region, were commissioned to write a chapter in a response to their Arts & Society theme within the context of their city.
Just as Ulysses is innovative in its form and language, so the writers were chosen with a view to reflecting a breadth of genres, styles and innovations. All the (new) chapters from the 18 cities/regions will be brought together in a book to be published in the Autumn 2024: ULYSSES European Odyssey.
Caspar Erik wrote the Copenhagen chapter.
Writer’s Statement
I’ve always been interested in what stories we tell each other and ourselves. And how these stories come into being, and how there is an infrastructure of storytelling where certain stories are not told. Stories that may happen in the shadows of the welfare state, or stories that play out in broad daylight, that we are somehow unable to grasp. Or on the physical streets and in our shared spaces, that may sometimes feel not so shared at all. They may be happy stories. They may be tragic ones.
I think this is why writing an audio walk that engages with a canonised western epic, such as Ulysses, seemed so appealing to me. Because I wanted to tell a personal story about living with a disabled body. I wanted to tell a story about having fictions and culture sticking to your body from the get go. And also I wanted to explore how this body is met on the streets, not only by looks and worn down bus drivers who get that tired look if they have to help a person in a wheelchair, but also by stairs and curbs. I wanted to tell a story about walking. And I wanted to tell a story about how this walking is also bound up with Denmark’s history of eugenics. How our venture into the cells of the body also meant the destruction of some of us. How all this happened just as Ulysses played out, how all this happened as the banks went down.
Writer’s Biography
Caspar Erik was born in Copenhagen in 1987. He is a writer and poet. He graduated from the University of Copenhagen with a masters in literature. He gained fame in 2014 after his poetry debut 7/11, which, in his own words, is a book about being young in 2014, about pop society and the fear of becoming obsolete. He has since become a spokesperson in the media for his generation. His publications revolve around the interior of a somewhat autobiographical narrator, but in interviews Eric often shows a more politically ideological side of his person and often uses himself as a point of departure.
Eric lives with cerebral palsy (spastic paralysis) – a disability he has described in several of his books: in his long poem NIKE in 2015, and, most extensively in Nye balancer from 2023, attention for which reached far beyond the culture columns. He reflects on the importance of living with a disability in modern society, which led to him being featured in DR’s news podcast Genstart under the heading “A physically impossible world”.
His poetry collection Avatar in 2017 centred on depression. The work consists of eight poetry suites or chapters, each inspired by texts or artworks that can be related to suicide. He has also been a voice on issues of sexuality in several media outlets, debating the male gender role and drawing attention to the overlooked in the sexuality debate. He is also behind several podcast series and is a singer in the music project Intet Altid.