Four Letter Words

Michael Kearney (author)

Djohan Hanapi (illustrator)

Setsuko Adachi (contributor)

Priyageetha Dia (contributor)

Lim Lee Ching (contributor)

Four Letter Words has at its core a unique concept of the collaborative effort. The author/poet, Michael Kearney, came up with the idea for a book of poetry and retinal art over twenty years ago. Inspired by William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman’s collaborations, and Roland Barthes’ notion of ‘The Death of the Author’, Kearney envisioned a work where the only communication between the poet and the artist would be the artist’s readings of the poems. After a long search, Kearney found Delere Press, who ventured to take on the challenging concept. The press placed Kearney’s poems with risograph artist Djohan Hanapi of Knuckles & Notch. Hanapi created his illustrations sans communication with Kearney until after the project was completed. The result is a work where the poems and illustrations can be examined/enjoyed as stand-alone pieces of art, or as a whole, which exposes the pitfalls of any attempt at forming a tight, concise, interpretation of these pieces. Four Letter Words is a work that is open to the possibility of a myriad of readings; it allows each reader to discover their own meaning(s), and perhaps also discover something(s) about themself.