Known principally as a poet, Karl Holmqvist almost exclusively uses verbal language for his work, in written or recited form. He often intervenes on gallery walls or on the surfaces of objects, almost always writing by hand in black marking pen. In the same manner he personally conducts performances, declaiming his poems, sometimes in a slow, mumbled rhythm reminiscent of Kerouac, sometimes in an anodyne rhythm of robotic voices created using technological mechanisms.
The expressive style of the Beat poets is a significant part of the cultural panorama from which the artist draws. The compositional method of his writing also seems rooted in the “cut and paste” montage method pioneered by Allen Ginsberg. [...] 
