Labyrinths by Borges
In a couple of sentences he paints marvelous characters lost in the complexties of cities and ideas. Some of these characters that people his stories have travelled along with me from continent to continent for the past three decades.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein creates a queer space in between silence and a metaphysics of everything that can exist, all that can be thought. Failure and a sense of possibility are intertwined throughout this poetic book.
Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
Stein’s use of repetition gives words, sentences a rhythm, a cadance, that is felt, meaning gets imprinted onto one´s skin. Her style of saying something something is rather erotic.
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec
This book is very dear to me (it inspired a long-durational poem) and I re-read parts of it from time to time. His eye for dusty details, beyond dogma, without judgment, makes particular places come alive again and again.
A Burst of Light and Other Essays by Audre Lorde
Her writings embody that poetry is politically subversive. In her words: ¨Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.¨ And to speak with Wittgenstein, if it can be thought, it can be (st)uttered, and if we can say it, we can do, we can change our world, change who we are becoming.
Roy Voragen is a poet, writer & curator and co-owner of publishing lab Kwago, he is based between the Philippines and the Netherlands.