Sprites of Svenshögen: A Residency Zine
- David Hartley
- 33 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Last November, I spent a month at Stationen i Svenshögen in rural Sweden on a writing residency. I had a wonderful time there, got lots of words written on a bigger project, and I put together a successful little ‘live writing’ event. But once I’d arrived home, I felt I wanted to mark the residency with something more tangible. So, I sat down in December and put together a little zine.
Just in case you don’t want to bother reading any further through this blogpost (which is understandable, I do rattle on), here’s the headline information:
The zine raises money for a good cause. Médecins Sans Frontiéres have long been one of my go-to charities because I’m always in awe of what they do. They are frontline right now in Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar, Congo, and many other places where people desperately need medical aid. They are one of the truly utopian organisations working hard within dystopian realms. My zine is frivolous and inconsequential, but it can at least raise a bit of money to help someone in desperate need.
The zine is called 32 pages long and tells a mostly fictional account of my time at Stationen. It features colour photography of edgelands and a whole gang of strange little creatures called ‘Sprites’. It comes with a ‘How to Find a Sprite’ hand-drawn mini-zine insert.
You can purchase it just by sending me whatever money you like to me via PayPal. Please send at least £3 to cover the cost of postage, and don’t forget to include your postal address so I know where I’m sending it.
Creative residencies are strange things. You spend a month away from home in an evocative location where you are expected to be creative and productive. Sometimes these residencies pay you a fee to be there (as was the case with both my Swedish and Estonian residencies last year), others you have to fork out a fair bit of your own cash to attend. Sometimes you’re with a whole bunch of other writers and artists, all of whom come with their own set of anxieties, homesickness, successes and failures, sometimes you are entirely isolated with your own anxieties, homesickness, successes and failures (short story recommendation 'The Resident' by Carmen Maria Machado from Her Body & Other Parties).
It’s easy to put a lot of pressure upon yourself to get an enormous amount of work done. I did this in Sweden. I had a blackboard in my room where I brazenly wrote the target of 50,000 words, filling up the gauge with each day’s progress towards that goal. Midway through the month I faltered somewhat. I wasn’t happy with what I’d written so far, and my energy levels and focus were dipping. At one point, I got some frustrating news from home that sapped my enthusiasm and made me irritable and agitated for a couple of days. I did hit that target in the end, but only with some rather creative mathematics via a sizeable chunk of redrafting of what I’d already set down. Nevertheless, I had been creative, and I had spent most of that time writing and being imaginative. The rest of it I’d spent reading, exploring, and experiencing the world beyond what I’m normally accustomed to. That’s the main thing about these residencies. Yes, they’re a space for creative thought and actions, but they’re mainly a space for creative absorption. I think the best idea is to be sponge-like. Let yourself be riddled with holes, and soak yourself in whatever pool you have found yourself in. Even if, to follow the metaphor, you eventually have to ring yourself out and return to a much drier state (OK, I think the metaphor has also dried itself up).
I already knew this to a certain extent, which is why I spent a fair bit of time in the surrounding area of Stationen creating the sprites. Most days I would head outside for a walk, trying to find new paths and routes, and Svenshögen would offer up plenty of atmospheric edgeland spaces to wander through; forests, a lake, silent train lines, a radio tower, a wind turbine, an old hospital. For the most part I was entirely alone. My head was full of folktales and fairy stories following the japes and jollies of my time in Estonia earlier in the year, so I allowed the ethereal creatures of rural Sweden to make themselves known. And so, from the leaves, twigs, berries, nuts, and bits of litter, the sprites would form themselves and pass on whatever wisdom or judgement I needed in that moment.
Sprite creation is a fun little activity you can try for yourself. Whenever you are in a place where people go but only sometimes, find a large basic item to act as the body. A big leaf often serves well, but so does a chunk of bark, a flat bit of stone or slate, that kind of thing. Set it down somewhere flat then make a start on the facial features. Small flowers or berries serve well for eyes, and bendy bits of foliage are often useful for mouths and noses. Consider including characterful extra features like antennae or scars, perhaps eyes on stalks or extra limbs. Twigs make for good arms and legs, of course, and keep an eye out for fluffy substances like moss or grass or wool that might serve as hair or beards. Sprites like a hat and other adornments, especially if they’re made from bottle tops or ring-pulls or other such scraps of human detritus. My sprites are often holding up some sort of offering: a flower on a stalk, a nut or seed, or an important piece of rubbish. Finally, they should always have a name, so opt for something that feels right in the moment, and I also like to give my sprites some kind of official-sounding role; ‘presenter of acorns’ or ‘decoder of dreams’ or ‘stag administration’, and so on.
What are they really? Well, like all fae creatures of folktales and myth, they are a playfully warped extension of our own selves. A call-back to simpler and more magical times that perhaps never existed, and/or a trickster manifestation of the parts of us that we don’t like to directly articulate. They’re hybrids of the human and non-human that summon and echo the repressions of our animal selves, perhaps a vanguard manifestation from the natural world of the reckoning of revenge that is imminent. Or maybe they’re just fun little dudes left in quiet spaces for the amusement of other wanderers.
Whatever they are or were, they proved to be a useful outlet for the overspill of my creative juices last November. Perhaps they were a bit of an offset when the main writing wasn’t going so well; proof to myself that I could still create something from nothing. That may also be what this zine is, ultimately. The 50,000 words penned in that cosy train station bedroom will likely get warped and bent out of shape and may never get seen by eyes other than my own. All of which is fine, of course, as creative work on that scale takes a lot of time, and a lot of failure and readjustment. Even the words of this zine aren’t quite what they were when I started it.
But like the sprites themselves, I wanted to offer something to the world, so here it is. Sprites of Svenshögen: A Residency Zine. Here’s a little extract:
There has been world news of the worst kind and the resident has not yet thought to close the shutters. He thinks, as he often does, of the concrete dome over reactor four at Chernobyl, the place that exploded just as he was born. He thinks of the cavern beneath that sarcophagus, unearthly lit. He thinks about how much writing he’d get done in there, supercharged and disembodied. Only a forest can deep clean such thoughts so he abandons his pen for the morning and takes to the local trees. Toopa awaits him. The sprite is a marauder in moss with a stout little bark body and stubby little fern hands. He is furious. Is this all it takes? Are you so easily snapped? He rustles the moss and the trees lean in, their creaks asking the questions the sprites have stored in their branches. What are you hiding from? What are you running from? What can’t you bear to confront? Why, a month from now, will you be making a zine of sprites and places when there will be loftier, harder work still to be done? What purpose does this have, what problem does this solve? Toopa snarls like a man who thinks he’s done well, like a man who thinks he’s restored the world to how it should be. The resident hurries by, moves deeper into the trees. Madness always lurks in forests, he thinks. Stay here and you will perish, he thinks, but escape and that exact same world still awaits you, poisoned by toxic explosions, minds still encased in the concrete that you cannot and will not crack. The resident breathes deeply. The air will never betray him. He keeps his head lifted. He sees a green woodpecker, flitting from tree trunk to tree trunk. It guides him out, then it points the way back to the Station. He becomes aware of all the birds along his route; finches, jays, tits, sparrows. They flit across the village tracing web lines and filaments, supercharged and disembodied.
And remember, none of this is profit making for me, it’s just something I wanted to put out into the world. All proceeds go straight to MSF and I’ll add a bit more on top once all the sales are done. There are only 50 copies available, and I doubt I’ll do a reprint, so if you want one, get your order in soon. Just click this button and welcome the wise and judgemental sprites into your life:
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