Poetry and artwork - Henry Denander

The UK Premier League has started again, busy days to keep up with all matches on TV. Arsenal is my team and maybe this year we'll see the start of a long period of silverware...

Here is my take on Lucas Torreira, the new midfielder. He plays in the national team of Uruguay and is one of my eleven favorites in the Arsenal team...

This old painting, I call it "Henry & William", was used in 2005 as an illustration to my poem "XXL". You can read the poem here, it's about me and my son walking down the street... doesn't that sound interesting? :-) 

One more saxophone player, "Circular Breathing", from 2017.

Watercolor, ink and collage.

I call his new painting "Doodlin' No.2".
 
Blue acrylics with ink and pen drawings. It's fairly large, 29x42 cm (11x16").

I made this collage painting for my friend Åke "Ache" Rosén's 70th birthday last week. 

I have loved Leonard Cohens music and writing since 1967 when I saw him on Swedish television, he was singing The Stranger Song and two more.

The collage is a mix of memory pieces of Leonard and his life on Hydra. His house is just a couple of hundred meters from our house (his telephone wires also passes our house). The rubber stamped cat is based on the watercolor I sent to Leonard together with one of my books. The coffee cup from when I saw him sitting at a café in the port one morning, in the sun in his blue pin-striped suit. The flowers - I picked flowers from his garden and dried them to send to friends.

If you're interested you can read my poem One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong it's based on a dream I had many years ago and it involves Leonard, Åke and myself singing together... hahaha

I made this collage based on the beautiful photo of Linda King. She is an American sculptor, artist and poet. I love her writing and I've read all her chapbooks and memoirs. She was the girlfriend of American writer Charles Bukowski for several years in the early 1970s, making her way into his life and writing.

I don't think we should believe exactly everything Bukowski wrote, but he said that Linda King had a large ego and a flair for self-dramatization - sounds more like Buk himself, eh?

Linda told me the photo was taken earlier, when she was married to her first husband and lived in Hollywood.

Anyway, Linda & Buk were a great combo.

I found this 38 year old watercolor sketch, could this be from Eskilstuna, my old home town? I don't think so.

Watercolor, pen and ink
Size 28 x 38cm (11 x 15").

In 1939, Count Basie's Kansas City Seven recorded "Leaster Leaps In", a tune credited to band member Lester Young.

Here's my take on Lester, a drawing titled "Lester Leaps Out".