Mette Hegnhøj

Mette Hegnhøj
Mette Hegnhøj: Ella er mit navn vil du købe det? Box of loose pages and ‘poem snow’. Notes, poetry, and script illustrations, Jensen & Dalgaard, 2014.

On a brown, coffee-stained cardboard box held together with an elastic band are the beautifully handwritten words: “Caution – Contains poem snow”. In addition to the poem snow there are 138 pages of text typed with an old typewriter.

These have been written by Ella, aged 11 to 12, to produce the work Ella er mit navn vil du købe det? (“Ella’s my name. Will you buy it?”, not translated into English). She circles around her sorrow by way of short notes – about being alone in an antiquarian bookshop while her mother is busy with a new man, or about losing her cat, Kattekismus, who was bestowed on them by way of an inheritance. Ella suspects that her mother got rid of the cat on account of Ella’s allergy. Her mother calls it a “cat hair allergy”, although Ella is convinced that it’s an “antiquarian dust allergy”. In revenge, she uses a hole punch to transform the antiquarian books into ‘poem snow’ while her mother spends the weekend with her new friend, the Bully. Then Ella goes the same way as her father and Kattekismus. Away.

These pages can be enjoyed by anyone, whether you’re 10 or 100. The language is simple and consistent in meter, making the girl aged 11-to-12 appear credible as, page after page, she verses the reader in her thoughts, her despair, and her affection for the missing: Kattekismus and her father.

Some of the tools Ella uses to turn this box into a unique work of art include playing with letters to create images, using concrete observations that capture the intangible, and embracing childhood reasoning to pluck up the courage to allow just a few words to be enough. The loose-leaf pages and typewriter font look back at a safe, familiar past, yet still represent an innovation in our digital age.

These pages and their content seem so authentic that you find yourself looking for the missing girl when you venture out after reading.     

In the interests of libraries and educators, this unique work has also been published as a book with a glued binding. The content is the same, but what about the effect? The authenticity feels different.

  • Mette Hegnhøj was born in 1976.
  • She trained at the Centre for Children’s Literature in Copenhagen.
  • Mette has published four children’s novels and made four contributions to the textual and visual work Skrædder i helvede (“Coward in hell”, not translated into English).