Ladonia

On a narrow strip of coast in southern Sweden, driftwood towers, rocks and waves become the foundations of a state built from art and language rather than laws, a country that exists more in imagination than on any map: Ladonia, a Baltic micronation.Through six interlinked cycles of poems and short prose pieces, this collection explores Ladonia as a living experiment in belonging, sovereignty and shared myth. The texts move between ruins, sea, flags and rituals, tracing how a place can come into being when people begin to recognise it and tell stories about it. Six languages-Indo-European, Old Norse, Latin, Greek, English and Esperanto-stand side by side, so that each poem becomes a small border crossing between times and cultures, between ancient history and imagined futures, between micronation and universality.Readers follow these circles of text through questions of identity, home and recognition: What makes a nation real? Who belongs to it? And how do memory, silence and shared imagination create a "state of recognition" that has no armies, yet leaves a deep mark on those who enter its world?

Autorentext

Born and raised in Belgium, the author - Count of Sealand - moved to Germany after completing his studies in German and Dutch language and literature, together with his qualification as a secondary school teacher, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven). While finding in teaching a vocation he continues to pursue with passion, he has also devoted himself to psychology and psychotherapeutic studies. In his free time, he finds inspiration in literature and photography-those quiet spaces of reflection and imagination that also shape the tone of his writing. Today, he lives in a green refuge in the Ruhr region. Since the early 1980s, poetry and prose have been his constant companions. Under the names "Raoul Qayjo, Hertog van Valkenburg, Graaf van Montfoort", and "Tristan Kafka, Herzog von Wolf zu Wolfsthal, Graf von Arnsberg & Eberstein", he has published numerous lyrical and prose works in Dutch and German. More recently, under the pseudonym "Trystan Caffcagh, Viscount of Frendraught, Baron of Thurnham & Thurnham Castle, Lord of Stowting Castle, Laird of Dunans Castle", he has also embarked on lyrical explorations in English for the first time.