Making Holes in the Water: A Limited-Edition Venetian Poetry-Photography Book

VENICE, Italy - May 5, 2026 - PRLog -- On the eve of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice/London based renaissance man Niels Knud-Ole Koschoreck releases his first poetry book, making holes in the water (Venetian Poems), a hand-stitched limited edition published by Damocle Edizioni. With black-and-white photography by his artist alter ego Varian Viciss, the book launches during the opening week of the Biennale and is limited to 100 numbered, signed copies. There will be no second printing.

The book's preoccupations - bridges, tides, mirrors, prayer, the in-between, the serene joy on the other side of sorrow - echo with striking precision the curatorial vision of the late Koyo Kouoh for Biennale Arte 2026, In Minor Keys. The Biennale describes the exhibition as one in which "the minor keys, often associated with strangeness, melancholy and sorrow," give way to "joy, solace, hope, and transcendence," and where "poetry is the beating heart." Koschoreck's poems, written in Venice over months of contemplative wandering, hold a similar register - what he describes as "the depths masked by distracting surfaces."

"Venice taught me that arrival and departure are the same gesture," Koschoreck says. "My life is measured in bridges. The space from here to there - the in-between - is where life actually lives. I wanted to write from inside that space, not about it."

The book is published by Damocle Edizioni, the celebrated independent house founded in 2009 by Pierpaolo Pregnolato in Venice's San Polo district. Damocle is recognised for handmade, movable-type artist books and bilingual editions of internationally acclaimed writers, including Ai Weiwei, Yang Lian, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg. Each copy is hand-printed and hand-stitched in Venice - a continuation of the city's typographic tradition that, by the close of the 15th century, accounted for roughly one-third of all books printed in the world.

The photographs are by Varian Viciss, Koschoreck's artistic alter ego for fine-art black-and-white work. The images do not illustrate the poems but "echo them from another dimension" - a bridge in mist, mirrors mirroring mirrors, an angel against an empty sky, a single swimmer in the lagoon at dawn.

Pre-orders are open at https://nielskoschoreck.com/venetianpoems, with four tiers: the book alone; book plus an audio recital read by the author; book, audio, and a video conversation about the poems' origins; and a fourth tier including a signed Instax print by Varian Viciss in a sub-edition of twelve.

The book will be officially presented during the opening days of Biennale Arte 2026 - a moment when, in Koschoreck's words, "the city is unusually alive, and at the same time strangely even more fleeting."