Reports From the Nose by Emma Aars

Ivy, rhubarb, dust. The short version. Reports from the Nose is a collection of writings about smell and scent, first published as a series of newsletters by Emma Aars.

Moving between essay and poetry, the texts explore the writer’s relationship to scent through everything from perfume to the smells of a life. In the book, smells structure Emma’s sense of self and belonging in years of movement and change, living between Oslo, Glasgow, Rome and London.

Smells also interrupt, disappear and confuse, and using words to describe them regularly exposes the limits of language. While many of the texts are anchored in different fragrances, the project deals with a larger idea: what smells mean to one’s sense of self, and how language might grasp something that is both intangible and ever-present.