La mer, it means the ocean in French. With the same pronunciation; la mère means the mother. The ocean, the mother. L’amour means love and la mort means death. They are also pronounced in a similar way to each other. The ocean is our mother, love is our death. I don’t speak French, but it symbolises something to all of us, the language of love and passion. la mer l’amour la mort. It was the title of my Masters solo show and of the poetry book I wrote in connection to it. This book is also an appendix to this essay. In the book the first poem is titled la chatte, which means the female cat, or the pussy, to the younger generation. I love to make these semi far fetched connections with language.

In this essay I have chosen to include the works of some of my greatest influences and specifically with poems relating to the ocean, love and death. I have chosen to use these texts in the language I first read them to keep the feeling they first gave me. Since I work a lot with translation or mixing between language in my own practice I here find the translator to be an important character of this text.