This essay is a study on how poetic form carries meaning in three books by Swedish poet Ida Börjel. It also examines the use of collage; how her books relate to the history of the collage as well as how collage is used in meaning making. The notion of collage that is being used, comes mainly from Marjorie Perloffs study The Futurist Moment (1986) with additional input from Collage in Twentieth-Century Art, Literature, and Culture (2014) by Rona Cran. To approach the formal aspects of the poems, I use The Meaning of Form in Contemporary Poetry (2016) by Robert Sheppard, as well as Ästhetische Theorie (1970) by Theodor W. Adorno.  

The reading of Sond shows that Börjel uses excerpts from a glossary, as well as a circular composition, to write poems that question the normative language of knowledge. Another poem in the same book is shown to examine the relationship between digitally written text and the physical materiality of the printed book. Ma, written in the form of an abecedarium, is shown to explore repetition and continuity, as well as variation, which are important aspects of the notion of form according to Adorno. Lastly, Omsorgslabyrinten is read not just as a text, but as a book, meaning that the images of the covers are connected to the text. This is similar to, or is a collage, in the sense that collage often works across different artistic media. In the reading of Omsorgslabyrinten, the voice of the poems is explored in relation to the ‘silent perspective’ the book is written through, which subverts the expectations of first-person perspective poetry.