tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312184022024-02-20T00:26:49.652+00:00Oceanographer of Oehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-31108067225820249842020-05-08T23:28:00.000+01:002020-05-08T23:31:01.846+01:00Further on ‘things’ kept, and their utility / value.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcKBhsnqIIwo1Iv9hZ7b3vFw2-kftZbCTWG2p5_FW8CW9v5Eoz5TzFIqsUppuFqbz0EUWSIMxgtT2OF1CBm_-xIF5kPexSEUgvYw1NQl2ysrE0UFN7MzJqvNrIVbL6Q8iqY5CWZg/s1600/pattern+language+cover+crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1279" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcKBhsnqIIwo1Iv9hZ7b3vFw2-kftZbCTWG2p5_FW8CW9v5Eoz5TzFIqsUppuFqbz0EUWSIMxgtT2OF1CBm_-xIF5kPexSEUgvYw1NQl2ysrE0UFN7MzJqvNrIVbL6Q8iqY5CWZg/s320/pattern+language+cover+crop.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Pattern
Language: The House Mill</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> (2019) turns a corpus of old objects, formerly useful but no longer
needed or even comprehended, into a photo book that is also a proposition about
heritage sites and remnants, and how they may play a role in new community
formations.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The disciplinary
context is ‘critical heritage studies’, the locus an 18th-century mill in east
London, now a cultural hub and visitor attraction. Artist in residence Cecilie
Gravesen focused on its surviving ‘collection of more than two thousand custom-made
mechanical <b>patterns</b>, once used for casting replacement components to
keep the Mill’s machinery working’ (p. 5). </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Workers and
retired people from the local area were invited to view and discuss these
objects, their interactions documented in a kind of typological conceptual
style by photographer Robin Stein, chosen by Gravesen for his ‘masterly control
of still life [and his] experience with the distinct language for directing
hands in commercial fashion shoots’ (p. 8). </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpVDkd3nwM4bGdycb1vSzBKYoU7NcCdoTWbBKXxPps1FVUN4OFfsGeuv4HTgL7RRd5HujP5abxWS3P2TEplR-jcptpzxr4w_N2BvsDcHJwybME8rDU95UGXqCpivyy_T7MszAJzQ/s1600/pattern+language+opening+crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1326" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpVDkd3nwM4bGdycb1vSzBKYoU7NcCdoTWbBKXxPps1FVUN4OFfsGeuv4HTgL7RRd5HujP5abxWS3P2TEplR-jcptpzxr4w_N2BvsDcHJwybME8rDU95UGXqCpivyy_T7MszAJzQ/s320/pattern+language+opening+crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The notion
of objects redeemed in the hand was explored also by TNWK (see previous post)
in ‘How to Handle Things Not Worth Keeping’: </span><a href="http://www.radiotaxi.org.uk/tnwk/thingsnotworthkeeping/index.html"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">http://www.radiotaxi.org.uk/tnwk/thingsnotworthkeeping/index.html</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">While the
artist Simon Lewandowski went one further, a while ago, in adding handles to
objects </span><a href="http://www.wildpansypress.com/index.php/publications/100-things-with-handles/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">http://www.wildpansypress.com/index.php/publications/100-things-with-handles/</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> )</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">‘Pattern
language’ invokes architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander’s 1970s repertoire
of approaches to designing human environments, intended to empower people to
design homes and community facilities for themselves. Gravesen’s participants’
own language is also included, in the form of brief conversational exchanges,
transcribed in an Appendix. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Something
here in common with a project by Alex Julyan and Bill Gilonis, noticed here
nearly 10 years ago, wherein objects were conveyed from one to the other purely
through description, to produce new representations: </span><a href="https://theunderfoot.blogspot.com/2011/01/verbi-visi-2010-selected.html"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">https://theunderfoot.blogspot.com/2011/01/verbi-visi-2010-selected.html</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> .</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Cecilie
Gravesen with Robin Stein, <i>Pattern Language: The House Mill</i>. Additional
text by Dean Scully. Design by Anna Rieger. Printed at Circadian Press,
Brooklyn, New York, 2019.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Cecilie
Gravesen </span><a href="http://www.ceciliegravesen.com/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">http://www.ceciliegravesen.com/</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Robin
Stein </span><a href="http://originaldocuments.net/#PatternLanguage"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">http://originaldocuments.net/#PatternLanguage</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">House
Mill </span><a href="https://housemill.org.uk/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">https://housemill.org.uk/</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Centre for Critical Heritage Studies </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/critical-heritage-studies/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">https://www.ucl.ac.uk/critical-heritage-studies/</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span>ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-87916658626948407602020-04-28T00:25:00.000+01:002020-04-28T00:32:45.139+01:00Coronavirus clear-out<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbRwjIBTjT6BLsbe_I_o3iwAxMyP0CvUoLKjYqh5UAr10AoDwJfpCmqUE8Br36C0Zd3jn2IyxoX9cj_vUTfHH2CQinuK3TxfwlTMztobJtEorS4dp4Ye69whBBQA_4Ogsh0AXmBQ/s1600/tnwk+200427.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1281" data-original-width="1600" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbRwjIBTjT6BLsbe_I_o3iwAxMyP0CvUoLKjYqh5UAr10AoDwJfpCmqUE8Br36C0Zd3jn2IyxoX9cj_vUTfHH2CQinuK3TxfwlTMztobJtEorS4dp4Ye69whBBQA_4Ogsh0AXmBQ/s320/tnwk+200427.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<i>'We would ask residents to be sensible about their waste production, and please … do not put out waste for collection that can sensibly be stored at home i.e. don’t clear out the shed, attic etc, and please delay any major DIY works' </i>(Council website). But what are you going to do: the space you now inhabit 23/7 needs clearing out too.<br />
<br />
Things Not Worth Keeping (TNWK) was an artist-poet duo, Kirsten Lavers and cris cheek, who did a fine series of socially, politically and conceptually searching and engaging work, usually in a public context and often based on language and inscription, from 1999 to 2007. An old website still gives a good overview: <a href="http://www.radiotaxi.org.uk/tnwk/thingsnotworthkeeping/index.html">http://www.radiotaxi.org.uk/tnwk/thingsnotworthkeeping/index.html</a>.<br />
<br />
See for example 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner', an audio portrait of a secondary school in special measures, by way of Coleridge's poem; or their response to the UK's participation in the Iraq war, based on Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's dictum,"we are taking these steps because words must mean what they say', <br />
<br />
The latter was performed during the whole of a legendary weekend festival, 'Total Writing London' (curated by Chris Goode at Camden People's Theatre) in March 2003, probably the origin of this carrier bag, which has hung by the front door, considered as an art work, perhaps ever since being brought here, in 2004.<br />
<br />
TNWK's Millennium Collection was about actual things and what made it possible for their owners to relinquish them <a collection="" frame.html="" href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=" millenniumcollection="" tnwk="" www.radiotaxi.org.uk="">http://www.radiotaxi.org.uk/tnwk/collection/millenniumcollection/frame.html</a>.<br />
<br />
This bag turns out to contain: two expired passports, 4 cheque book stubs and a paying-in book, obsolete Polish and Hungarian currency, certificate of a tetanus jab, a mortgage statement relating to a former home.<br />
<br />
<br />ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-77179138977588796522014-11-02T15:00:00.000+00:002014-11-02T16:13:51.611+00:00Art and the WW1 commemoration controversyI partly agree with Jonathan Jones's criticism of the official spectacular and attractive poppy installation, but not with his assertion that a true work of art about World War 1 can only be 'obscene'. In yesterday's <i>Guardian </i>Jones approvingly illustrated for example an Otto Dix drawing of a worm-eaten skull <br />
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/31/world-war-one-poppies-memorial-cameron">http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/31/world-war-one-poppies-memorial-cameron</a><br />
<br />
A small but compelling installation for the 1914 centenary by Rose Frain is currently on show at the National Art Library inside London's Victoria and Albert Museum <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/3525/this-time-in-history-what-escapes-by-rose-frain-wwi-5030/">http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/3525/this-time-in-history-what-escapes-by-rose-frain-wwi-5030/</a> . It evokes the prone and pierced body of the fallen combatant, but indirectly, within a multivalent arena of references to battlefields ancient and modern. It juxtaposes both precious and quotidian objects from the museum with things found and collected by the artist, and new enigmatic art works. The mortal head of a soldier is metonymically present in a simple assemblage of present-day Balaclava and dog tags (making a fortuitous comparison with the Dix drawing instanced by Jones), while an 18th century Afghan arm-guard, made for a touchingly slender limb, lies open, inlaid with (Koranic) prayers. A 1918 soldiers' phrase-book in 3 languages: 'Help me to carry him'. Modern-day soldiers' equipment: their rations, and rather pathetic first aid kit. A postcard honours the nurse Edith Cavell, executed in Belgium for treating the wounded of both sides.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkH5pRHO4QIRszr75tJrF24-b5uPbNamq9NWhjME7JexcgkHSyCZ9ULC9jkCDSlLZMr_URpXJYKN8iZJs66FKxlTBLUQtEXk6HZCekZwX7kaVRxkawATua3TR5r0Mwu7gHEhpXw/s1600/Bala_DogTags2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkH5pRHO4QIRszr75tJrF24-b5uPbNamq9NWhjME7JexcgkHSyCZ9ULC9jkCDSlLZMr_URpXJYKN8iZJs66FKxlTBLUQtEXk6HZCekZwX7kaVRxkawATua3TR5r0Mwu7gHEhpXw/s1600/Bala_DogTags2.jpg" height="320" width="267" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Balaclava and dog tags. Photo copyright Rose Frain</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
These and other items are placed in juxtaposition amid an erect swarm of ghostly white shells and grenades. Incorporated within the ensemble is another artist's war piece, from the enemy side: Theodore von Gosen's four bronze medals (1914) each bearing a Horseman of the Apocalypse: these have something of the grotesque admired by Jones in Dix. Nearby, a small rust-coloured gobbet of something - actually a fragment of horse chestnut - in a white enamel bowl hints most nearly at surgical horrors. But the stylised 'O' shapes that ricochet across the whole work suggest both gunshot wounds and cries, of shock, pain, or lamentation.<br />
<br />
There is far more to this installation than detailed here, including an artist's book that draws on Shakespeare's words, reminding us that we need language as well as imagery to think with and to talk to one other, friend and enemy. In all I see in this work a very contemporary artistic approach to commemorating war that acknowledges suffering and honours courage, tender to our own but without chauvinism, and does not fail to make connections with the urgent ongoing conflicts of today. And it works through an invitation to associate and reflect, rather than the relatively simplistic 'impact' of either massed ceramic poppies or maggoty skulls.<br />
<br />
Disclaimer: I curated Rose Frain's installation at the V&A, but these comments are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either the Museum or the artist.<br />
<br />
<b>This Time in History: What Escapes (2014-1914), </b>by Rose Frain<br />
Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7 2RL<br />
Room 85 (at the entrance to the National Art Library)<br />
Until 1 February 2015. Free.<br />
<br />ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-62373342546988370652014-02-28T19:50:00.002+00:002014-02-28T19:50:47.532+00:00Cake books by Rose Finn-Kelcey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhXdpaIPyMtoQ4akoa_F-pdrpxNMtqUmHZWSROwPcD4gLEr9M7xAzmuz_-eFo9g0J91T-BcJwUXSKlO9K0MrG_zvkJDmLA9xQL3NzUQej-SLTsu-T5_kJoJD516DD8uholZy4J4Q/s1600/rfinnkelcey-cake-books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhXdpaIPyMtoQ4akoa_F-pdrpxNMtqUmHZWSROwPcD4gLEr9M7xAzmuz_-eFo9g0J91T-BcJwUXSKlO9K0MrG_zvkJDmLA9xQL3NzUQej-SLTsu-T5_kJoJD516DD8uholZy4J4Q/s1600/rfinnkelcey-cake-books.jpg" height="320" width="288" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ulhLXDSz0eRnC5uIVcfloWt3CCWW28dGvcQCIAN5ybjbqNikkN477NtPfnFGud8pEdaUCjvCTEgehe6y6kEm_0bobpFEsWLpZZXM8pEnd3Yb43T1ZYzrjo8n9KbOxOCCr8SO2w/s1600/rfk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ulhLXDSz0eRnC5uIVcfloWt3CCWW28dGvcQCIAN5ybjbqNikkN477NtPfnFGud8pEdaUCjvCTEgehe6y6kEm_0bobpFEsWLpZZXM8pEnd3Yb43T1ZYzrjo8n9KbOxOCCr8SO2w/s1600/rfk.jpg" height="200" width="165" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="subtitle_1">
<i>Rose Finn-Kelcey</i>, Guy Brett, Sarah Kent, Michael Stanley (Ridinghouse, 2013)</div>
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So sad to learn of the death of Rose Finn-Kelcey. A year ago, at Karsten Schubert's, recall the table full of 'books' she'd made, of sponge-cake, with iced jackets, to match the monograph about her that was launched that night.<br />
ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-51499685020446230042012-01-04T01:27:00.001+00:002012-01-04T01:28:37.305+00:00happy new year: books to go over with<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Thanks to nearest & dearest, the Oceanographer is equipped for 2012 with:</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLu2Fi9enAqU2OtPXExhyphenhyphenjCnryyO5Kmn-Sb22GX6AX2tplGHVFSay3C50LZMZ9n_rY3OMbPFGg3TiNm-JnYnHAvUUCoddjyj9V9aiIj2gWtIQhEfmTkxciS02l_PQ_fiquV854Qw/s1600/garfield-type.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLu2Fi9enAqU2OtPXExhyphenhyphenjCnryyO5Kmn-Sb22GX6AX2tplGHVFSay3C50LZMZ9n_rY3OMbPFGg3TiNm-JnYnHAvUUCoddjyj9V9aiIj2gWtIQhEfmTkxciS02l_PQ_fiquV854Qw/s200/garfield-type.JPG" width="134px" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Simon Garfield, <em>Just My Type: a Book about Fonts</em> (paperback Profile, 2011; first pub. 2010). Journalistic & anecdotal (classified as 'Reference / Humour' ...) but informative; and great that this subject is now popular.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYPn4yi_5sj9B_a23dnjGo7PX0HyaU_dGkHKJgCr1w-rwfVAP3HPYqr41_TFJbylaZ-50ZgrJLGH6IC6wpXXqlFcllEhgIxV-5IyrTzBTrQs6GrbGjoDFGxrtkVlCUlVkLXOSrzg/s1600/prynne-kazoo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYPn4yi_5sj9B_a23dnjGo7PX0HyaU_dGkHKJgCr1w-rwfVAP3HPYqr41_TFJbylaZ-50ZgrJLGH6IC6wpXXqlFcllEhgIxV-5IyrTzBTrQs6GrbGjoDFGxrtkVlCUlVkLXOSrzg/s320/prynne-kazoo.JPG" width="237px" /></a></div>J.H. Prynne, <em>Kazoo Dreamboats, or, What There Is</em> (Critical Documents, 2011). A prose, set in Song type, with a bibliography.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4e-kxQwlDT5PDd06Fi3Jzwk8m6l0yvQIX9daUgJodV52Ji70zB0XhVyDxl5toKLIyWbH23DFUkQlJqG0HfOWodunv0fmHyUoAn2XMq_c5oFykFk3W7fMtpmj4m62N7DtzhcaCkg/s1600/ranciere-mallarme.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4e-kxQwlDT5PDd06Fi3Jzwk8m6l0yvQIX9daUgJodV52Ji70zB0XhVyDxl5toKLIyWbH23DFUkQlJqG0HfOWodunv0fmHyUoAn2XMq_c5oFykFk3W7fMtpmj4m62N7DtzhcaCkg/s200/ranciere-mallarme.JPG" width="134px" /></a></div>Jacques Rancière (trans. Steven Corcoran), <em>Mallarmé: the Politics of the Siren</em> (Continuum, 2011, first French pub. 1996). 'Mallarmé's problem is linked to the fact that the page is not only the material support of the poem, or the allegory of its obligation. It belongs to the very movement and texture of the poem. The surface of writing is the place of a taking-place.' p. 43).<br />
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi367O6bzrSMGE_38V1D3WQX-qeEev7PT5VV6JnZx2IBp4dS-0C1y1dIv3vkLPoMZbX2SUU97wCT8SyQ_xqOoRJaf88H6hmyA6AsB4IXC7uXda2X4X3Ts2XGkeIsyhPIFm206Nn0g/s1600/rowson-offence.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi367O6bzrSMGE_38V1D3WQX-qeEev7PT5VV6JnZx2IBp4dS-0C1y1dIv3vkLPoMZbX2SUU97wCT8SyQ_xqOoRJaf88H6hmyA6AsB4IXC7uXda2X4X3Ts2XGkeIsyhPIFm206Nn0g/s200/rowson-offence.JPG" width="125px" /></a></div>Martin Rowson, <em>Giving Offence</em> (Seagull, 2009, 'Manifestos for the 21st Century' series). 'A cartoon that isn't knocking copy becomes merely propaganda' (p. 39). Rowson reveals how much hate you draw when you draw politics (Alastair Campbell's gratuitous foul-mouthery on merely seeing Rowson in the street is astonishing, p. 19). A beautifully made little volume by the Indian-based <a href="http://www.seagullbooks.org/" target="_blank">Seagull Books</a>. <br />
<br />
The first book actually <em>read</em> in 2012 is:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9rOaFiETDcny8o0sLFi1TeHyqwsY1VR9mF_xMLnmlJ7m6WMnCkkq2WKcMC5A1MdhHWW9XPNKe3jfKKWadirwbzoRLzj_FQNqQmDGckg3NPhE0w1t9jOYFBZpG5lyp6Tc7wONo8g/s1600/gardner-herso.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9rOaFiETDcny8o0sLFi1TeHyqwsY1VR9mF_xMLnmlJ7m6WMnCkkq2WKcMC5A1MdhHWW9XPNKe3jfKKWadirwbzoRLzj_FQNqQmDGckg3NPhE0w1t9jOYFBZpG5lyp6Tc7wONo8g/s200/gardner-herso.JPG" width="134px" /></a></div>Susana Gardner, <em>Herso: an Heirship in Waves</em> (Black Radish Books, 2011), an innovative sequence full of wordplay and in a great range of registers and visual arrangements. Versions of parts of this exist in other forms including as an e-chapbook under Susana's wonderful Dusie project <a href="http://www.dusie.org/scrawlread.pdf">http://www.dusie.org/scrawlread.pdf</a> I like especially the near-anagrammatic 'Minarets'.<br />
<br />
Finally, here are some more or less visual or material books & publishers from 2011 that we just want to say Hoorah to. (All the terrible omissions may or may not be repaired later ... the one thing learned over the past -- good heavens -- 5 years of this sluggish blog is that only by accepting radical incompleteness is it possible to proceed at all ...). In no significant order:<br />
<br />
1. Les Coleman, <em>Afterthunks</em> (<a href="http://boewoe.home.xs4all.nl/frame2.htm" target="_blank">Boekie Woekie</a>, Amsterdam). <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnEOlAVmp4MnnMepvBIxpx8JTe6LabMwyXDHPiuvnkG69LSwCF0_SOW2YLWw9t3J40_-FN5utsoB9K1siJYUKqGyE5jUFeShOxQSaa2ag_Fd32zsYdE-lvVXVbWfJjD9FIP32WBQ/s1600/coleman-unthunks.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnEOlAVmp4MnnMepvBIxpx8JTe6LabMwyXDHPiuvnkG69LSwCF0_SOW2YLWw9t3J40_-FN5utsoB9K1siJYUKqGyE5jUFeShOxQSaa2ag_Fd32zsYdE-lvVXVbWfJjD9FIP32WBQ/s200/coleman-unthunks.JPG" width="154px" /></a></div>Looking at so many 'normal' cartoons has finally brought me to appreciate the refinement of the absurdist drawings and miniature poetic utterances of Les Coleman, associate of Glen Baxter, Patrick Hughes and their hero Anthony Earnshaw (as per previous post). This little collection has a foreword by N.F. Simpson, no less; is very simply but perfectly designed (by Colin Sackett). <br />
<br />
2. Laurie Clark, <em>100 buttercups</em> (WAX 366, Fife).<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZdDbLagVi59KvYEEzZPZQhgWvpsdcHa9QiKjEUPjFfMi6Lt23s7DWJ5Mfi8J9mcU-RVRAi-JqIWDsXDsyEu70dE9x8ZS2sjruZseinFcOiCTA0PbKv-FeVbKUUT2pFG-VV5p5fw/s1600/clark-buttercups.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZdDbLagVi59KvYEEzZPZQhgWvpsdcHa9QiKjEUPjFfMi6Lt23s7DWJ5Mfi8J9mcU-RVRAi-JqIWDsXDsyEu70dE9x8ZS2sjruZseinFcOiCTA0PbKv-FeVbKUUT2pFG-VV5p5fw/s200/clark-buttercups.JPG" width="143px" /></a></div>(This is a very bad photograph of) a chunky white book (actually published in 2010) with nothing in it front to back but reproduced colour portraits of one hundred buttercups, one per page, and a minimal colophon. This is not a piece of trivial prettiness, it is an emotionally moving and very robust acknowledgement of the demand to encounter, life and the other. Published by the brilliant David Bellingham. Where would you get it? Try the <a href="http://www.inglebygallery.com/edition/one-hundred-and-one-buttercups/" target="_blank">Ingleby Gallery</a>, Edinburgh, who have the 'special' ed (same, but with an original drawing) -- plus better images on their website.<br />
<br />
3. David Miller, <em>Black, Grey and White: a Book of Visual Sonnets</em> (<a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/veer-books" target="_blank">Veer</a>, Birkbeck, London).<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7b-c2SL5W6tjUl3P-sAPHz5CYez0XTCi4CJSAQJUFPah7k3nMSUMLFFAbkSi3tGId48nTwuSl2wywNUCyzBn8Y9dTtX5ySyojKyJIpFCkIdw008NjVt6RzYHZKAq6EOEvBI8lOQ/s320/miller.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="224px" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Miller, visual sonnet, picture taken from the Veer website <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/veer-books">http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/veer-books</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">One might wish higher production values for this very modest stapled pamphlet of beautiful brushed work, but Veer are doing more than any other British press at present for visual poetry. David Miller is a senior figure known predominantly for prose poetry and extended sequences (also writings on art, small press bibliography and other). This outbreak of visual sonnets is enormously consonant with his sensibility and yet very new, exciting.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">4. Sean Bonney, <em>The Commons</em> (<a href="http://www.openned.com/" target="_blank">Openned</a>, London).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASOje3N1ULtmrfflM7ZHeY3yRQsuJGDH2xnLriJpPWWTyof6UTWME-VFI_6ECKLKypNvsqFnu6V_LR6KPjxuKY1yzDweVrJkNXtnLvE_FoV_767CTxhjIJV_VUT2C50Xi1xGBKA/s1600/bonney-commons.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASOje3N1ULtmrfflM7ZHeY3yRQsuJGDH2xnLriJpPWWTyof6UTWME-VFI_6ECKLKypNvsqFnu6V_LR6KPjxuKY1yzDweVrJkNXtnLvE_FoV_767CTxhjIJV_VUT2C50Xi1xGBKA/s320/bonney-commons.JPG" width="150px" /></a></div>More sonnets; all in words, in a perfectly commercially-viable little pocket format -- but done with the perceptiveness and style of everything undertaken by the Openned people. When did you last see a paperback in a hessian chemise -- with a badge! It is the coolest thing <em>ever,</em> and yet still somehow gritty, proper little press. Not to mention that Sean Bonney is now a poet of enormous maturity and depth as well as blistering energy and ideological venom (who has seen his Rimbaud versions issued too, this year, by the Association of Musical Marxists' new imprint <a href="http://www.unkant.com/" target="_blank">Unkant</a>, also in a surprisingly attractive style).ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-50008307855120793272012-01-01T23:22:00.092+00:002012-01-02T23:12:10.198+00:00casual sunny november post (unfinished)'It is really very nice<br />
to be in London on a sunny November day<br />
and calling at Compendium to see Nick<br />
who gives me nice new book by Fielding Dawson<br />
....'<br />
(Jim Burns, 'Casual poem')<br />
At the <a href="http://www.oxfammarylebone.co.uk/" target="_blank">Oxfam book & music shop in Marylebone High Street</a>, sunny Saturday 19th November: Jim Burns's <em>The Goldfish Speaks From Beyond the Grave</em> (Salamander Imprint, 1976), a collection of poems with Frank O'Hara's influence all over it, by a poet who used to be published in Grosseteste Review, and it's illustrated with <em>cartoons,</em> by Gray Joliffe (later creator of Wicked Willie, arg). Part of the poet's determined Preston working-class credentials? (the main theme of the book is being drunk (& divorced ...)). Testament to 1970s broadmindedness anyway.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMJhGu-sEBVXTTHw95HFhwyEn0c-k8z_PvgnJ1iZDUbv-60JWtUsf_7H5QZfq5lOudh3ICY0fSLLmTLMtDA2O5Wl7gfHDIwH1MivA5vlsKi3RjwNvx5Ryduo78gBTH8oRFYlGK7A/s1600/burns-goldfish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMJhGu-sEBVXTTHw95HFhwyEn0c-k8z_PvgnJ1iZDUbv-60JWtUsf_7H5QZfq5lOudh3ICY0fSLLmTLMtDA2O5Wl7gfHDIwH1MivA5vlsKi3RjwNvx5Ryduo78gBTH8oRFYlGK7A/s200/burns-goldfish.jpg" width="132px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poems by Jim Burns, cover design and ills. by Gray Jolliffe. Salamander, 1976.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Cartoons are everywhere, Oceanside, these last few months, because of <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/private-eye-the-first-50-years/" target="_blank">Private Eye: the First 50 Years</a> at the V&A. Are cartoons like poems? are they a verbo-visual genre of distinction, like emblems? Many cartoons are essentially illustrated jokes, though clearly 'the drawing should make the reader smile', ideally 'even before he laughs at the caption' (Willie Rushton <a href="http://www.gilescartoons.co.uk/annual.asp?id=45" target="_blank">on Giles</a>). Many cartoons avoid the caption by putting the language in the image, or in a speech balloon. I am most attracted to the purist idea that 'the best jokes don't have any words' (Nicholas Whitmore, in a <a href="http://www.journallive.co.uk/lifestyle-news/newcastle-features/2007/11/27/drawing-on-the-funny-side-of-life-61634-20164551" target="_blank">great interview</a>). Some even when 'silent', are inspired by verbal gags -- puns, or 'Martian' literalisations. E.H. Gombrich, in his essay 'The Cartoonist's Armoury' allies this both to the archaic practice of personification and to Freudian psychology, where it comes close to the Surrealist absurd, flavour of a few cartoons in <em>Private Eye</em>, including some of Ed McLachlan's earlier images, and the work of two brilliant deceased artists, <a href="http://www.johnglashan.com/" target="_blank">John Glashan </a>and Kevin Woodcock. In August I picked up a lovely Glashan book from 1961 at the <strong>Capital Bookshop, Cardiff</strong> (27 Morgan Arcade CF10 1AF).</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx2XvA3ZDpj3zLQ5hZJxR447cdyjCSLFocNKxIwLGPIBUz3ipSixzNIOMPNXNycD-SmAYIeo8FpqPl85ovRjm3iToZUkBF8yA-Jjsu7znM20NfgQ-4bMa0kh00S4UQqpqc1a_YLw/s1600/glashan-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx2XvA3ZDpj3zLQ5hZJxR447cdyjCSLFocNKxIwLGPIBUz3ipSixzNIOMPNXNycD-SmAYIeo8FpqPl85ovRjm3iToZUkBF8yA-Jjsu7znM20NfgQ-4bMa0kh00S4UQqpqc1a_YLw/s200/glashan-2.jpg" width="152px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Glashan, The Eye of the Needle (Dobson Books, 1961)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The 'imp of Surrealism' in England was <a href="http://www.anthonyearnshaw.com/" target="_blank">Anthony Earnshaw</a> (also, like Jim Burns jazz afficionado from the north of England -- in Leeds he taught Glen Baxter among others), of whose work there was a wonderful retrospective at <a href="http://www.flowersgalleries.com/exhibitions/4271-the-imp-of-surrealism/" target="_blank">Angela Flowers</a> (Kingsland Road) during September. Original artwork for his cartoon strip series <a href="http://www.anthonyearnshaw.com/51" target="_blank">Wokker</a>, made with Eric Thacker, was wonderful to see. </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXk10xKh6BwzLeFBmeyOPz-l2RV1D5yRy9orhBDKh9X-WD3CBnNJcnQjd93bqlfkFkWk8Zx8B_WUsZudlTdOoDZYCXWnPetiSgkdfPFTVItNBtVYvqOFfr7MORxJdP54xGUOT3A/s1600/earnshaw-x.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXk10xKh6BwzLeFBmeyOPz-l2RV1D5yRy9orhBDKh9X-WD3CBnNJcnQjd93bqlfkFkWk8Zx8B_WUsZudlTdOoDZYCXWnPetiSgkdfPFTVItNBtVYvqOFfr7MORxJdP54xGUOT3A/s320/earnshaw-x.JPG" width="154px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anthony Earnshaw, from <a href="http://www.anthonyearnshaw.com/prints.htm" target="_blank">Seven Secret Alphabets</a> </td></tr>
</tbody></table> <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjNe5jzABkDDn5-JLya1T1hI4bOv77DZJJf9lr4SzOsdRJR762ylvFCgg7sGnxl2Hd2duCocwmR7bVFRliiErGu6b8SVIhPVyRzWdec7uhcVFQGeMs3qfteZ7-dnyZV0mjIR7fQ/s1600/key-size.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="146px" rea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjNe5jzABkDDn5-JLya1T1hI4bOv77DZJJf9lr4SzOsdRJR762ylvFCgg7sGnxl2Hd2duCocwmR7bVFRliiErGu6b8SVIhPVyRzWdec7uhcVFQGeMs3qfteZ7-dnyZV0mjIR7fQ/s200/key-size.jpg" width="200px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Simon Key, from <em>Private Eye</em> 1288 (May 2011, after the Alternative Vote referendum). See also the artist's <a href="http://www.keyart.co.uk/private_eye.html" target="_blank">website</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-75954137022651276792011-08-15T21:34:00.002+01:002012-01-03T22:25:45.225+00:00cultureBBC4: 'Great Thinkers in their own words'<br />
Raymond Williams on Cambridge, Richard Hoggart's invention of cultural studies, and F.R. Leavis:<br />
<br />
I'll say <em>this</em> for Sir Charles Percy Snow:<br />
Wrote that 'Two Cultures' piece, years ago.<br />
Of course Leavis was furious<br />
Made remarks mosr injurious --<br />
What exactly? You don't want to know.<br />
(Not so much just 'Yes but ...' as just 'NO!')<br />
<br />
G. Ingli Jamesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-28007560657497896582011-05-14T23:47:00.001+01:002012-01-03T22:27:33.698+00:00DUMMY BOOKS: please do not touch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW2DAKy46pZ66i3Gs9dChI6ez9JLTqzMFcRIYEbUm98_cuNHHSQ7F1_KgwX50IZiPFPAM3etdhoH6U_cMJo1wl6_oDlDIn6YHTRyFGt5nHjnyd8ZaZsB66qrIuNNdtsRnO5fUmOA/s1600/wallace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Wallace Collection, London 13v11" border="0" height="256px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW2DAKy46pZ66i3Gs9dChI6ez9JLTqzMFcRIYEbUm98_cuNHHSQ7F1_KgwX50IZiPFPAM3etdhoH6U_cMJo1wl6_oDlDIn6YHTRyFGt5nHjnyd8ZaZsB66qrIuNNdtsRnO5fUmOA/s320/wallace.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div>Yesterday evening at the <a href="http://www.wallacecollection.org/index.php" target="_blank">Wallace Collection</a>, Manchester Square: 'Watteau: A Critical Journey Through Publications, from Edmond de Goncourt to the Modern Day' given by Christoph Vogtherr, Curator of pre-1800 Paintings. Watteau was a rather mysterious artist whose elevation to the rank of Old Master owed much to the manner of his exposure through publications, starting with those of his patron Jean de Julienne, whose collection is the subject of a special exhibition currently at the Wallace, coinciding with a focussed display of their numerous paintings by Watteau. The lecture was informative and accessible, and the evening included not only a look at the Julienne exhibition but a hands-on display in the <a href="http://www.wallacecollection.org/thecollection/libraryandarchives/library" target="_blank">library</a> of the books being discussed, and (<em>not</em> in the same room) a glass of wine. <br />
<br />
Many spaces in the Wallace collection are charmingly decorated with unexpected items: dozens of elaborate, empty antique picture frames cluster on the walls of the lecture theatre, and in the seminar room eccentric collages of small labels, signs and notices (above).ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-31097078170375577542011-01-11T01:00:00.006+00:002020-05-07T23:23:48.642+01:00verbi visi 2010 (selected)Alexandra Julyan & Bill Gilonis, <em><a href="http://www.alexjulyan.com/text/lost" target="_blank">Lost in translation</a></em> (London: Lost & Found Publishing, 2009. ISBN 9780956287601). An original and thoughtful collaboration: drawings made in literal interpretation of non-explanatory descriptions of objects selected by chance in another country ... <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgSmrxWTkoaKy6g2tdoZOU7xxypEgqJTG2IT0Cx7O9R_JqN_CIgGAF6Oqn0F8QUGpuR1YMxpMH0Sul_P2icSNZ-btSPm9XohZd_xuY-5btfOjwhHm1ynD2zZKv1zAOA2ZsMNRyHA/s1600/lost-in-translation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgSmrxWTkoaKy6g2tdoZOU7xxypEgqJTG2IT0Cx7O9R_JqN_CIgGAF6Oqn0F8QUGpuR1YMxpMH0Sul_P2icSNZ-btSPm9XohZd_xuY-5btfOjwhHm1ynD2zZKv1zAOA2ZsMNRyHA/s200/lost-in-translation.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Ed Ruscha exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (closed 10 January). Loved this; hadn't expected to.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWNi-fzuhwv84TqGpnlL_Z3T9TEeMFrMSP3lBuKG8TYyTTvExKnceijoZwxWIroDcSzH4rOmzxYdPph53TvkwvrSXsyZRURhDyepv_BIyI5cM1okbjO2St11XRueYFqO__91DC4Q/s1600/ruscha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="142" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWNi-fzuhwv84TqGpnlL_Z3T9TEeMFrMSP3lBuKG8TYyTTvExKnceijoZwxWIroDcSzH4rOmzxYdPph53TvkwvrSXsyZRURhDyepv_BIyI5cM1okbjO2St11XRueYFqO__91DC4Q/s200/ruscha.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ed Ruscha (postcard)</td></tr>
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The year-long residency of <a href="http://kaleideditions.com/eshop/" target="_blank">KALEID Editions</a> at 23-25 Redchurch Street was an exciting feature in the London artists' books landscape, founded by the dynamic and clever Victoria Browne, herself a very interesting artist. We look forward to all her future activities.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://kaleideditions.com/eshop/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/Dark_Matter_4adf0e88656df.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://kaleideditions.com/eshop/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/Dark_Matter_4adf0e88656df.jpg" height="132" n4="true" width="200"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Victoria Browne, <em>Dark matter</em> (2009), photo lifted from KALEID website </td></tr>
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<a href="http://bokship.wordpress.com/category/publication-as-practice-a-short-course-on-concepts-of-artists-publications/" target="_blank">'Publication as practice</a>: a short course on concepts of artists' publications', hosted at Donlon Books, Cambridge Heath Road (spring /summer 2010) by Eleanor Vonne Brown, another energetic and clever woman who makes interesting things happen (noticed in this blog last year). <br />
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Letterpress revival I: <a href="http://www.craterpress.co.uk/" target="_blank">Crater Press</a> poetry pamphlets:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir8NUtexJ2saTwTGBP5MLEpQ6Qe9LBoFw580Z8D8fuxeX9wr3_yZsFvQ2rMyx_hOtLbKFIIfgwfa_HCSFGWRPRnTq6n3UPowRnqdKJTPxSusZJppby3C0DR9kA9KC7t8-RfUfnQA/s1600/crater.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir8NUtexJ2saTwTGBP5MLEpQ6Qe9LBoFw580Z8D8fuxeX9wr3_yZsFvQ2rMyx_hOtLbKFIIfgwfa_HCSFGWRPRnTq6n3UPowRnqdKJTPxSusZJppby3C0DR9kA9KC7t8-RfUfnQA/s200/crater.JPG" width="153" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crater poetry pamphlets 3-5: Harry Gilonis, <em>Acacia feelings: the collected poems of Pao Ling-hui</em> (Dec. 2009); Amy De'Ath, Andromeda / <em>The world works for me</em> (Jan. 2010); Keston Sutherland, <em>The stats on infinity</em> (Mar. 2010).</td></tr>
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Douglas Gordon <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/douglasgordon/default.shtm" target="_blank">text installation</a> at Tate Britain (May). Fragmentary utterances in vinyl. Wish we had gone to Glasgow in the autumn to see the <a href="http://www.thecommonguild.org.uk/2010/08/robert-barry/" target="_blank">Robert Barry exhibition</a> at The Common Guild. Can anyone out there compare, contrast, comment?<br />
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<a href="http://www.sitegallery.org/?s=sol+lewitt" target="_blank">Sol LeWitt: artists' books</a> Exhibition at SITE Gallery, Sheffield (May). Plus: Artists' publications and the legacy of Sol Lewitt: a conference at Sheffield Hallam University. Coordinated by <a href="http://www.rgap.co.uk/news.php" target="_blank">RGAP</a> (Research Group for Artists' Publications). We have <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/50079820@N00/sets/72157625729278432/" target="_blank">a few snapshots </a>on Flickr. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib0qSAM_CA5JUitX3wp5FDzYDsJy0VY1Y6d0PR1sIs96yCw0F6xLo64E8lHn6Rvs059hx5ebNIwcr29-lWDzsRykoVvAu6E7HHPVL1MixCYs6arrHCBJNlkBpZR_Nt5_3ltg-kmw/s1600/0-wall-drawing-960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib0qSAM_CA5JUitX3wp5FDzYDsJy0VY1Y6d0PR1sIs96yCw0F6xLo64E8lHn6Rvs059hx5ebNIwcr29-lWDzsRykoVvAu6E7HHPVL1MixCYs6arrHCBJNlkBpZR_Nt5_3ltg-kmw/s200/0-wall-drawing-960.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sol LeWitt wall drawing #960 being executed at Site Gallery, Sheffield, 8 May 2010 (by David McNab, here, and Bryan Eccleshall)</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.englandgallery.com/artist_group.php?mainId=135&media=Prints" target="_blank">John Furnival: somewhere between poetry and painting</a>. Exhibition of prints and constructions at England & Co. (May)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZOFPh5b8YZkvyghbvmF_MvVHd03xi1wGl2JMZjKSN0gSTqB2AGouX7wpcj7QkBHEuXG3lduGNPt2c2mv5pytyO_C2ijKOcJ4sVYbFWodAOcIS1z3NeMYgtzigo9V37YeXZ0SJHQ/s1600/furnival.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZOFPh5b8YZkvyghbvmF_MvVHd03xi1wGl2JMZjKSN0gSTqB2AGouX7wpcj7QkBHEuXG3lduGNPt2c2mv5pytyO_C2ijKOcJ4sVYbFWodAOcIS1z3NeMYgtzigo9V37YeXZ0SJHQ/s200/furnival.JPG" width="143" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em>Poetry Review</em> vol. 65 no. 1 (1974); cover by John Furnival</td></tr>
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Art of banking: Susan Johanknecht, <em><strong>baring antebellum</strong></em> (2010). <br />
As one of the participants in an ongoing <a href="http://www.baringarchive.org.uk/materials/project_researching_press_release.pdf" target="_blank">art project concerning the archives of Barings Bank</a>, Susan Johanknecht published a book of poetry, or text art, based partly on the links she discovered in the archives between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Barings. this work is comparable to some of Susan Howe's books but has a particular beauty and how topical can you get? It is available for a mere £10: further information including contact address for the artist is in the indispensable <a href="http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/newspdfs/60.pdf" target="_blank">Book Arts Newsletter no. 60</a>, Oct. 2010, p. 23.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDDEAIzrVjQyv0EI7byTGxP2K8xK8E5vXj-w5isGj1aJZAdYotG3HF1XSN6yTjSIwWac6xvGC6Tk2b_XksHmXJ0RAZRfigLiH13lDV5ifWMwdvxhak8I8m7lPzy8KRBngOnYV8Xg/s1600/susanj.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDDEAIzrVjQyv0EI7byTGxP2K8xK8E5vXj-w5isGj1aJZAdYotG3HF1XSN6yTjSIwWac6xvGC6Tk2b_XksHmXJ0RAZRfigLiH13lDV5ifWMwdvxhak8I8m7lPzy8KRBngOnYV8Xg/s200/susanj.JPG" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em>baring antebellum</em>, cover, referencing marbled ledgers, but not quite ...</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgddW_8oiKysr011EC4wL4zRKTI-9H3zLWMmh5dcGj0mGC02A2Ci_JWt7r7vJe0B3A1prpS1hyMp0FMnXTPKbq8hiLnN5aD55tQIw9W8u-uxg0856U2S3dPE9eaDw1GqIY5OJbXow/s1600/susanj-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="182" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgddW_8oiKysr011EC4wL4zRKTI-9H3zLWMmh5dcGj0mGC02A2Ci_JWt7r7vJe0B3A1prpS1hyMp0FMnXTPKbq8hiLnN5aD55tQIw9W8u-uxg0856U2S3dPE9eaDw1GqIY5OJbXow/s200/susanj-2.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Susan Johanknecht, <em>baring antebellum,</em> text printed on paper resembling account book pages</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.mummeryschnelle.com/pastpages/merlin2.htm" target="_blank">Merlin James: frame paintings</a> Exhibition at Mummery + Schnelle (June-July), including poetry reading in dialogue with the art, on 12 June, by John Freeman, Elizabeth James and Oliver Reynolds.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1WNMSww6-LIt7OFI7P0efW3I36DqLtnxblY-bEGdENX8l8FeOVs2agUlx6eLd70bbAihWfwwHo1XsePeoUuBnMf1GTv0iegLEKZYygyHtSZP9NhOWrh9n2vYOHORDTkb_p6Vgkg/s1600/ej+reading-crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1WNMSww6-LIt7OFI7P0efW3I36DqLtnxblY-bEGdENX8l8FeOVs2agUlx6eLd70bbAihWfwwHo1XsePeoUuBnMf1GTv0iegLEKZYygyHtSZP9NhOWrh9n2vYOHORDTkb_p6Vgkg/s200/ej+reading-crop.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">EJ reading 'poem (frames') with MJ frame paintings (Photo Michele Tocca)</td></tr>
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Letterpress revival II: V&A Illustration Awards won by Sarah Carr for images created wholly from type elements, for <em><strong>How to drink</strong></em> by Victoria Moore (<a href="http://grantabooks.com/page/3032/HowToDrink/23" target="_blank">Granta</a>, 2009). (The publisher's website makes no mention of the images; and the book itself is not printed letterpress of course ... )<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjAGGVUw60i9v2zsRbnkouIo2zl7pjUyECBo5jPvus2VRTekcF7lXnFFr1vebQdbMyL47e5IMip5NPipfxIau1itXpBvjCxSfB8jdMNHpIH4F5pHoKy2FirCWahHqETrCv491frA/s1600/67601-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjAGGVUw60i9v2zsRbnkouIo2zl7pjUyECBo5jPvus2VRTekcF7lXnFFr1vebQdbMyL47e5IMip5NPipfxIau1itXpBvjCxSfB8jdMNHpIH4F5pHoKy2FirCWahHqETrCv491frA/s200/67601-large.jpg" width="172" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sarah Carr, illustration [espresso machine], from <em>How to Drink</em></td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.mulfran.co.uk/MulfranMiniatures.html">Mulfran Miniatures</a>: sweet new series of small-format illustrated poetry pamphlets from Cardiff-based <strong>Mulfran Press</strong>:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixWbOz3PDibFrbYU80AOG213UlWCFJ8M84wdbou46ta2KOWTynj_2tmdpLZEY1GFHedmEld_udJxhpElmCFzMXepNozP_enbQNRZNMruE6p1ic3D1e70CZDdYupEi72mH_QA7Tug/s1600/mulfran-mini.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixWbOz3PDibFrbYU80AOG213UlWCFJ8M84wdbou46ta2KOWTynj_2tmdpLZEY1GFHedmEld_udJxhpElmCFzMXepNozP_enbQNRZNMruE6p1ic3D1e70CZDdYupEi72mH_QA7Tug/s200/mulfran-mini.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roy Morgans, <em>The sychbant</em>, with images by Marion KV Kenning (Mulfran, 2010)</td></tr>
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And here's the biggest book of poetry I own:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVoMo-V9ywdyFVQ5_7tkJn6yTgTD79kHbfCdWTh8meP_3NOcfyFFJLmRhTSEjCfPAsQWxMVPD84o4EetH1D8rlv1ebdZrmAcbxknvzqQhyphenhypheniTHmQAqF6VkG3zamq7kQs7vVKDLQjg/s1600/big-book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="372" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVoMo-V9ywdyFVQ5_7tkJn6yTgTD79kHbfCdWTh8meP_3NOcfyFFJLmRhTSEjCfPAsQWxMVPD84o4EetH1D8rlv1ebdZrmAcbxknvzqQhyphenhypheniTHmQAqF6VkG3zamq7kQs7vVKDLQjg/s400/big-book.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">J.H. Prynne, <em><a href="http://www.barquepress.com/subsongs.html" target="_blank">Sub songs</a></em> (Barque, 2010)</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/news/LondonCrossGenrefestival" target="_blank">Women's Innovative Poetry and Cross-genre Festival</a>, University of Greenwich, 14-16 July. Susanna Gardner's review is in <a href="http://www.openned.com/epubs/2010/9/4/openned-zine-3.html" target="_blank">Openned Zine 3</a>. We only managed to get to a few performances, but bought many items at the excellent student-staffed book table. To obtain the following books, try contacting <a href="http://www.westhousebooks.co.uk/books.asp?category=DI&sortorder=" target="_blank">West House</a> books (even though they are not listed).<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ1Otd5pXCCm4CQXc-b3izsiZp2diy62OHEtnFD8lca32sFo52-43SlXG0Vqi8sY4ZDbJXB5XxEpqujuFLyXFQDkhvN4TVp7OKEaDLvR6sMdv3Y2HF_YTJbkoUtIsNfGUBqwfGRg/s1600/ckennedy-ooo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ1Otd5pXCCm4CQXc-b3izsiZp2diy62OHEtnFD8lca32sFo52-43SlXG0Vqi8sY4ZDbJXB5XxEpqujuFLyXFQDkhvN4TVp7OKEaDLvR6sMdv3Y2HF_YTJbkoUtIsNfGUBqwfGRg/s200/ckennedy-ooo.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christine Kennedy / David Annwn, <em>Dadadollz </em>(ISP Press, Wakefield, 2010 ISBN 0953389758)</td></tr>
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Christine Kennedy gave a great performance at Greenwich of her <em><strong>Hobby Horse: a Puppet Play for Cabaret Voltaire</strong>,</em> complete with cast -- Hannah Hoch, Emmy Hennings, Sophie Taeuber Arp and others -- as a clothes-line of articulated puppets, brilliantly ventriloquised with the Monty-Pythonesque expedient of wiggling two fingers through their mouth holes. Generically Kennedy's text is a performance script, mixing in 'looking glass' Alice (the Cabaret Voltaire having been appropriately located in Spiegelstrasse), first-world-war combat medicine and the Large Hadron collider at Cern (particle physics being of course the most dada of sciences), and including images (Christine is equally poet and artist). It is published in this book alongside a text by David Annwn also inspired by the DaDa mammas and their use of dolls and puppets.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyYFpCmV1VoC6G5NmOJLb3z58yBNIn-hxhFRRHRQdh-KbtXBUxT8N7NMoSm3SWg7hmi6b6vZIvnTGMhcViJTAlCLPCT5Ohd87VVUnF4KazVqsGHJeO2lNVYPjgCezvSVn8ieF7NA/s1600/presley-brading-ooo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyYFpCmV1VoC6G5NmOJLb3z58yBNIn-hxhFRRHRQdh-KbtXBUxT8N7NMoSm3SWg7hmi6b6vZIvnTGMhcViJTAlCLPCT5Ohd87VVUnF4KazVqsGHJeO2lNVYPjgCezvSVn8ieF7NA/s200/presley-brading-ooo.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tilla Brading & Frances Presley, <em>Stone Settings</em> (Odyssey Books / Other Press ISBN 9781897654002)</td></tr>
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Frances Presley and Tilla Brading launched the publication of their long-standing project on Exmoor's standing stones and archaeology at Greenwich with a slide presentation with animation to do full justice to the visual and intermedia contributions of both poets. I missed this, but a few weeks before heard Tilla do a part of it at the Hay-on-Wye Poetry Jamboree -- a low tech version, where the audience had to improvise the part of a rain stick.<em> </em>The field is wide open, including prose (the passage 'Triscome Stone' is one of my favourite bits), diagrams, music, abstract shapes, colour, breaths of subtle humour. <em><strong>Stone settings</strong></em> in print is presented as a completely integrated collaborative whole (like Frances's and my <em>Neither the One Nor the Other</em> (1999), and all the writing has a kind of tolerant co-existence, as well as a quiet but distinct energy. Every page or opening is different and striking in a justified (composed) mature way. I really like this book.<br />
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No-one is more innovative or cross-genre than the fabulous Jennifer Pike (Cobbing), who turned 90 years old in 2010, unbelievably. Veer Press are due great credit for bringing out books of her visual poetry, <em><strong>SCRUNCH</strong></em>, which went into a second edition this year:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwz32GT5AX34kjyqFdPnISTn0Ur0JqUTExx4EdHl7GMNKbNAAqHvV4q8A8IeXYBVfBduOR6JmLFX4E_O-GAxuBYHf2JAQe1U2qPH1OdNTnYHubJWr6rpeqXYlQPNKori2FmPQ50A/s1600/jennifer-ooo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwz32GT5AX34kjyqFdPnISTn0Ur0JqUTExx4EdHl7GMNKbNAAqHvV4q8A8IeXYBVfBduOR6JmLFX4E_O-GAxuBYHf2JAQe1U2qPH1OdNTnYHubJWr6rpeqXYlQPNKori2FmPQ50A/s200/jennifer-ooo.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jennifer Pike Cobbing, <em>SCRUNCH</em> (Veer, 2009/10)</td></tr>
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and the new <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/Veer_Publications/Veer029" target="_blank">Conglomization of Wot</a>. Meanwhile on July 10th there was a birthday launch by Writers Forum of a new number of <strong><em>AND</em></strong> -- the magazine founded by Bob Cobbing in 1954, still now only on its 13th number -- essentially a festschrift for Jennifer, edited by Adrian Clarke and Ulli Freer. I'm not sure how you can get a copy, but try contacting Adrian Clarke via <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/veer-books" target="_blank">Veer</a>. Videos of <a href="http://www.openned.com/writers-forum-jennifer/" target="_blank">readings from that day</a> are on the Openned website (including our own).<br />
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Talking of Veer: all their books are worth buying, but here are the 2010 titles from two of our favourite poets:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUoeiFrvncI7jk8Q_pd1LfZI2MCvriD-tc5M4OtMJoLJtnbqh7PQYrAptDgbQQigACewNcSfNGqfcKhn46eXi2znbSD6R_4OYEFrx_Wb2uHP0RiHAyEYuYkTbsgmUOhvMwKwlDCQ/s1600/veer.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="130" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUoeiFrvncI7jk8Q_pd1LfZI2MCvriD-tc5M4OtMJoLJtnbqh7PQYrAptDgbQQigACewNcSfNGqfcKhn46eXi2znbSD6R_4OYEFrx_Wb2uHP0RiHAyEYuYkTbsgmUOhvMwKwlDCQ/s200/veer.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Veer books: Harry Gilonis, <em>Eye-blink, from North Hills</em>, with cover painting by David Rees, ISBN 9781907088209; Jeff Hilson, <em>In the Assarts</em>, ISBN 9781907088186</td></tr>
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In October Allen Fisher gave a series of 3 slide talks on 'The Complexity Manifold', weekly at 3 different locations in London. They were fascinating overlapping compilations of aspects of his long-time poetics. Notes from the talks (sans images) are linked from <a href="http://allenfisher.co.uk/allen-fisher-events-calendar/" target="_blank">this page</a> on Allen's website. Shortly thereafter he published a new book of work: <em><strong>Proposals: poem--image--commentary</strong></em>:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqS_8h-SP-8N0IdnUXqcZ1GAcCAkbeY9aukpAzLG92QcEfQx5KTHOUz-XTu1MVluMOpM5h9AiKWvy8tl8unVuzcKyHaNOGA455fw-Th4lbfVNweDyWSwHng9C5SjxCVE2NSwduUw/s1600/allen-f.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqS_8h-SP-8N0IdnUXqcZ1GAcCAkbeY9aukpAzLG92QcEfQx5KTHOUz-XTu1MVluMOpM5h9AiKWvy8tl8unVuzcKyHaNOGA455fw-Th4lbfVNweDyWSwHng9C5SjxCVE2NSwduUw/s200/allen-f.JPG" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Allen Fisher, <em>Proposals</em> (Spanner, 2010 ISBN 9780856520891)</td></tr>
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The cover image resembles a Blake title page; the 35 tri-partite 'proposals' are somewhat like emblems:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgakyXWmb_JlW9BXPk3LqxWSzjwrYi6NktZiV0iXc4RiYMZH5nCtwY3rVNvd6Xl_cW-Yq1x9Pxa0sF1sqdWy48q6oyaQno1I6absKAhLmHVj1MoXIof7x5q1wVNJqGaAjd9VTKwA/s1600/allen-f-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="165" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgakyXWmb_JlW9BXPk3LqxWSzjwrYi6NktZiV0iXc4RiYMZH5nCtwY3rVNvd6Xl_cW-Yq1x9Pxa0sF1sqdWy48q6oyaQno1I6absKAhLmHVj1MoXIof7x5q1wVNJqGaAjd9VTKwA/s200/allen-f-2.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em>Proposals</em> 11</td></tr>
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The images are (reproduced from) diptychs of paint and collage, apparently made on the pages of an art history book from which captions are occasionally visible; this book does not seem to appear in the customary AF list of 'Resources' at the back, which runs from Badiou toWittgenstein, via Milton Friedman, Amartya Sen, &c. To generalise vastly: the left-hand images concern fire & power, the right-hand ones more suggest imaginative transformations, 'the artist'. But this book deserves far better than disconnected observations, and yields much to a dedicated reading, of which I have only given it my first over the Christmas break. Allen Fisher is a truly exemplary artist, in his lifelong address to the, uh, <em>key issues</em> of living, thinking and making today. Read this book for 2011! Get it from Spanner <a href="http://allenfisher.co.uk/recent-publications/" target="_blank">website</a>.<br />
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<em>When he becomes clearly lacking in confidence in the work in the connection in any / efficacy he begins to understand the confluence of becoming that is being proposed</em> (<em>Proposals</em> 29, commentary)</div>
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<a href="http://www.laurencesternetrust.org.uk/shandy-hall.php" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shandy Hall</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is by now a top vortex for literature + art in England. </span><a href="http://www.laurencesternetrust.org.uk/exhibition.php?id=84" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Perverse Library</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> was a great exhibition organised by </span><a href="http://informationasmaterial.com/iam/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">information as material</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> of visual and material books and objects based on the personal library of the brilliant <a href="http://english.utah.edu/eclipse/Editor/" target="_blank">Craig Dworkin</a>, anthologist and archivist par excellence of avant garde writing, with a closing <em>vernissage</em> on 30 October. Here we picked up (bought) a copy of a wonderful anthology of visual text: Louis L<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">üthi, <em>On the self-reflexive page</em> (<a href="http://www.orderromapublications.org/Product.aspx?pid=185" target="_blank">Roma Publications</a>, 2010 ISBN 97877459478): "a typology of self-reflexive pages: Black Pages, Blank Pages, Drawing Pages, Photography Pages, Text Pages, Number Pages, and Punctuation Pages" from over 60 texts, authors including: Paul Auster, Samuel Beckett, Douglas Coupland, Mark Danielewski, Umberto Eco, Jonathan Safran Foer, Alasdair Gray, Steven Hall, B.S. Johnson, Richard Kostelanetz, Reif Larsen, Harry Matthews, Vladimir Nabokov, Don Paterson (yes really), Raymond Roussel, W.G. Sebald ... i.e. authors by and large of significant mainstream/highbrow recognition ... and now we come to look at it, <em>only 2 women</em>: Christine Brooke-Rose and Madeline Gins.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF6QDgv2ruMiA1nmKQsx_s6wOjNiaPuh5z64ie1pMBSiYW0g1wTbkT_L9RQBi3EsFSnRC1Zdg4pUZxhD-Zeo4uC9jlOHEasa3u4hzTzjDF337_skvWO9slFfxocXWw9GulWCtY6g/s1600/louisl-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="153" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF6QDgv2ruMiA1nmKQsx_s6wOjNiaPuh5z64ie1pMBSiYW0g1wTbkT_L9RQBi3EsFSnRC1Zdg4pUZxhD-Zeo4uC9jlOHEasa3u4hzTzjDF337_skvWO9slFfxocXWw9GulWCtY6g/s200/louisl-2.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em>The self-reflexive page</em><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">, pp. 18-19: from Jonathan Safran Foer, <em>Extremely Loud</em> ... [etc] p. 284; Steven Hall, <em>The raw shark texts</em>, p. 421.</span></td></tr>
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In November bookbinder and jeweller Romilly Saumarez Smith hosted an exhibition of remarkable photographs by Verdi Yahooda of bookbinding tools.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Verdi Yahooda: this image taken from a postcard: for best views see the <a href="http://www.verdi-yahooda.co.uk/works/6romilly/index.html" target="_blank">artist's website</a></td></tr>
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To the lay person such tools may be slightly enchanting, but here they become numinous objects, through various techniques and materials including the use of slide film and rag paper. Some of the photographs are now also published in an inexpensive book by Trace Editions.<br />
<a href="http://www.verdi-yahooda.co.uk/aBooks/romilly.html" target="_blank">Romilly's tools: an incomplete set</a> (2010) ISBN 978-0-9550945-4-5<br />
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At Sophie Schneideman's book and print shop in Portobello Road, an <a href="http://www.ssrbooks.com/pages/exhibitions-2" target="_blank">exhibition in November-December</a> of early books and prints by Ronald King's <a href="http://www.circlepress.com/" target="_blank">Circle Press</a>, probably the foremost artist-press in England of its kind, that is to say, based on original printmaking and letterpress, marrying (usually) new poetry of a non-conservative kind with superb illustration, often technically innnovative. The Oceaographer here learned an expensive lesson: at the private view, we fell for and bought, for over £100, the following:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Christie, <em>Listen</em> (Circle Press, 1975)</td></tr>
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"a word and image sequence related to, and suggested by, lines [the artist, John Christie] particularly liked in Erik Satie's 'Sports et Divertissements' ... the complete text appears at the end of this book in an English translation by Simon Cutts". As I write, there is a copy of this book on Abe for £15 (and a couple in North America at under £50). <em>Ouch!!</em><br />
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<a href="http://tomlubbock.com/" target="_blank">Tom Lubbock</a>, best known as an inspiring and scrupulous critic of contemporary and historical art, is also a sometime artist himself. From 1999 to 2004 he was commissioned to produce a weekly collage for publication on the editorial page of the Saturday <em>Independent</em> newspaper, in the position that is typically given to a cartoon. <a href="http://www.victoria-miro.com/exhibitions/_415/" target="_blank">A selection of these works</a> has just been on show at the Victoria Miro gallery N1 7RW (December) and <u><em><span style="color: red;">is viewable through January</span></em></u>: on Saturdays 15th and 22nd, and otherwise by appointment: +44 (0)20 7336 8109.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM7uBZ3qjTotJ_l3DRMnOlzUn6uyyUH3tWK7iUrhyphenhyphenjdXWeIWjl9Mo1-h73nyo34Wa88VTZ8CUVPgu4sWQx_mGf8jyfykKMuRQT4BZWlZDvEspYnOZBtnog1O7CfqEcSFj61lwcgA/s1600/78_190_13891_350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM7uBZ3qjTotJ_l3DRMnOlzUn6uyyUH3tWK7iUrhyphenhyphenjdXWeIWjl9Mo1-h73nyo34Wa88VTZ8CUVPgu4sWQx_mGf8jyfykKMuRQT4BZWlZDvEspYnOZBtnog1O7CfqEcSFj61lwcgA/s1600/78_190_13891_350.jpg" /></a></div>
<em>Post script: sadly, sadly, Tom Lubbock died yesterday (9th Jan.), after 2 1/2 years fighting cancer. I owed him, and I liked him. He was a remarkable person, and so is his wife. </em><br />
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Letterpress revival III: <a href="http://www.standpointlondon.co.uk/RTT.html" target="_blank">Reverting to type</a> exhibition at Standpoint Gallery, Coronet Street N1 6HD<br />
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(<em><u><span style="color: red;">this is still on through January 2011</span></u></em>)</div>
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Finally, something comic, though we do not usually make heh-heh: a close relative has invented a new verse-form, the <em>6-line</em> literary limerick. His book is <em><strong>I'll say this ... : seventy-six (six-line) literary limericks</strong>, by "Ingli"</em> [G. Ingli James] (Carn Ingli, 2010). Contact me via Comments below for info on how to obtain it. Here's one relevant to our interests in this blog (my own copy also boasts, in holograph, a great one on Marshall McLuhan) -- note that some of the poems also have footnotes ...:</div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I'll say this for Cummings, E.E.*</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">he has fun with the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ty</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> po</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> gra</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> phy </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> and employs lower case</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> in an upper case place --</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">as if rooting for </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> de</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> moc</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> racy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">(What on earth can one say but <em>tee</em> <em>hee</em>?) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: x-small;">*referred to by Edmund Wilson as 'hee hee cunnings'</span></div>
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ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-65368856340577939872010-11-21T23:18:00.004+00:002010-11-25T21:44:54.854+00:00short return (for ian w, peter f & alicia c)At the Small Publishers' Fair, London, 12-13 November 2010<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">seekers of lice, notes/ohms; books by Antoine Lefebvre; Maria White, alphabet week; Helen Douglas, A Venetian Brocade; Lindsay Adams, Fluviatile</td></tr>
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Most interesting exhibitor<br />
Antoine Lefebvre's <a href="http://www.labibliothequefantastique.net/" target="_blank">La Bibliothèque Fantastique</a> "une maison d'édition virtuelle des livres d'artistes, dont les livres sont gratuits" also constitutes the éditeur's PhD project on the Book, and appropriates / decimates most of his academic reading, in a series of simple black & white photocopied stapled pamphlets on ordinary typing paper, all of which are downloadable for free; but (like me) many people prefer to pay the £3 a go. Many titles are by other artists; one ongoing collaboration, with Jérémie Bennequin, performs the erasure of Mallarmé's 'Un coup de des ...', syllable by syllable, each next one selected by -- you guessed it. Each performance works right through the version partially erased by the last, and they will continue until there are only 5 syllables left (since the next throw of the dice risks being a six ...). Even this is being done in the most dematerialised manner, at a computer (though Bennequin's more habitual practice involves pages and rubber erasers -- he is working through Proust, as you might imagine. I love the French: "Quelle allure! Des intellectuels!")<br />
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Most "Are you actually a fine artist or a poet"?*<br />
<a href="http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=11661" target="_blank">Seekers of lice</a> publishes Japanese-style-bound pamphlets, often including semi-transparent pages, of what I would call 'innovative poetry' by its singular proprietor. The Oceanographer selected <em>Notes / Ohms</em> (2010), in which words and phrases from the first 3 pages are redistributed throughout the text which is divided into several sections by painted leaves.<br />
(*SoL was asked this in a radio interview)<br />
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Favourite performance<br />
Didier Mathieu (of the <a href="http://cdla.info/en" target="_blank">Centre des livres d'artiste</a> at St-Yrieix-la-perche) and Nick Thurston (of <a href="http://informationasmaterial.com/iam/" target="_blank">Information as material</a> reading together / simultaneously, selected passages from Beckett's <em>Watt,</em> rewritten, replacing all substantive words with the name of their part of speech; respectively in French and English (available as a set of 3 large prints in each language -- <a href="http://informationasmaterial.com/iam/2009/09/edition-he-series/" target="_blank">the English versions</a> are published by IoM and were on display recently at the very wonderful <a href="http://www.laurencesternetrust.org.uk/exhibition.php?id=84" target="_blank">Perverse Library exhibition</a> they organised at <a href="http://www.laurencesternetrust.org.uk/shandy-hall.php" target="_blank">Shandy Hall</a>. cdla publish the <a href="http://cdla.info/en/publications/nick-thurston" target="_blank">French translation</a>.<br />
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<em>Plus</em> of course (O declares an interest): Harry Gilonis reading from <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/Veer_Publications/Veer032" target="_blank">Eye-blink</a>, his new book of 'faithless' (but genuine) translations of Tang Dynasty poems, published by the excellent poetry press Veer, with a painting by David Rees on the cover.<br />
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Most perfect book<br />
<em>1. Alphabet Week</em>, by Maria White (<a ?_blank?="" href="http://www.essencepress.co.uk/" target="_blank">Essence Press</a> [Julie Johnstone, Edinburgh])<br />
A little white job, 7 cm square, printed in blue with the names of the days of the week, one name per page, in alphabetical order. <br />
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2. Erica Van Horn and Simon Cutts, After Brancusi (<a href="http://www.coracle.ie/pages/new_books.html" target="_blank">Coracle</a>)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv0QjWNSShy09i3bHccFWQYEBHME8V6LfgTY34uJhx-yxhJcr0mA7jgUXqINnM9hFkhgWWIwJnfIwjtVQ0GhS5T89EUMS8yJ71vFU6M13TsFI7OpSlwVPlPu6DKOxkahbkTRPRJw/s1600/after-brancusi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="158" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv0QjWNSShy09i3bHccFWQYEBHME8V6LfgTY34uJhx-yxhJcr0mA7jgUXqINnM9hFkhgWWIwJnfIwjtVQ0GhS5T89EUMS8yJ71vFU6M13TsFI7OpSlwVPlPu6DKOxkahbkTRPRJw/s320/after-brancusi.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(detail) "all furniture is sculpture ... all sculpture is furniture"</td></tr>
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Two beautiful photo books<br />
1. Helen Douglas's new book from <a href="http://www.weproductions.com/" target="_blank">Weproductions</a> is <em>A Venetian Brocade</em>, which, by contrast with <em>Queene and Belle</em> (2008), returns to the lush page-filling and subtle syncopation of earlier books. It's a bold subject: colour photographs of Venice, digitally manipulated, could be a recipe for cliché but it is done superbly. It is tempting to flick, but the book needs and deserves proper 'reading', as the sequence is integral. It includes a short fiction by Marina Warner, the subject of which is the visit to Venice in the late 16th century of a pious young Japanese Jesuit, and his exposure there to visual pleasure and the erotic intimations of art. This is certainly relevant to Douglas's almost voluptuous opening of/to the city itself. Free of the novitiate's religious inhibitions, the artist's desire is however tempered by an aesthetic discipline which has sought, and hidden in these pages more, I think, than meets the casual eye.<br />
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2. <em>Fluviatile</em>, by the painter Lindsey Adams, reproduces almost 50 remarkable rich and ambiguous abstract images that are in fact unmanipulated photographs taken of (and in) a running stream, <a href="http://www.lindseyadams.co.uk/photo/index.html" target="_blank">Hartshay Brook</a>, near her home in Derbyshire. The book's design and sequencing are handled with care, the blank and text pages tinted in varying watery whites. There is a thoughtful introduction essay by Rebecca Fortnum but Adams like Douglas has also invited an imaginative contribution by a writer, Michelene Wandor (same initials! spooky ...), and since the images here are (mainly) printed as a discrete series on recto pages only, Wandor's poem can penetrate throughout them. The poem is given to Ophelia, and under its influence one begins to discern her cloudy figure in the water ...<br />
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Apples<br />
A small jar of apple jelly given me by <a href="http://schoolofeverything.com/teacher/ceribuck" target="_blank">Ceri Buck</a>, with a copy of <em>What is Action?</em> (2006), her poem based on the parts of an apple. A diary of apple labels, by <a href="http://www.re-title.com/artists/Anne-Rook.asp" target="_blank">Anne Rook</a>.ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-84839432979760728882009-11-23T21:26:00.015+00:002009-11-23T23:06:59.682+00:00dark afternoon (Sophie Calle at the Whitechapel)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSHPUSr4lMs5vGIo0pJ5okQWp2HyXw_Zqk9kgt6iAKgZefo3nkLcoV57TT5a6LcLwtxXv2AAPEyemJGfgfRtaEo0UAMDjpW-K4UWzGMz8xfPHUr_-fmE2owVAvp1ydq3r9vy4JdQ/s1600/tree-lights.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSHPUSr4lMs5vGIo0pJ5okQWp2HyXw_Zqk9kgt6iAKgZefo3nkLcoV57TT5a6LcLwtxXv2AAPEyemJGfgfRtaEo0UAMDjpW-K4UWzGMz8xfPHUr_-fmE2owVAvp1ydq3r9vy4JdQ/s320/tree-lights.jpg" border="0" alt="Lit trees above the skating rink, Natural History Museum, South Kensington"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407435003352772946" /></a><br />The challenge is to get through to the winter solstice without succumbing to depression.<br />*<br />To Whitechapel Art Gallery for ARLIS UK & Ireland (Art Libraries Society) 40th Anniversary Members' Day. Director Iwona Blazwick spoke with respect of the old public library, once alongside the gallery and a venerable meeting-place for artists, activists and local citizens, but long since transmogrified (by the borough, not the Gallery) into an 'Ideas Store' elsewhere. The old large reading room (unrecognisable) is now available for events such as ours, but it also contains a few ideas of its own, orchestrated currently by artist Goshka Macuga. Remembering that Picasso's 'Guernica' was exhibited at the Whitechapel in 1939, Macuga has (amazingly!) borrowed the life-size tapestry version of the painting that was commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller and now normally hangs at the UN in New York, outside the Security Council, lest they forget. The same work that was covered by a blue curtain when Colin Powell stood in front of it to make the case for war on Iraq in early 2003. Together with a few other things including a film of young Vietnam veterans testifying regretfully to what they had got up to.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO7DmM7ZoP72S_GYi6MAwzL9FZaBXRcAgUCcSw1Ad0X2o2ZB7QR3LB84kFAkDUzsa_jndrQ0p1TPbGd3MruQ0EzudJUfSFSQr7NgrXkEn6Kpi9otcr7BQS4u1Ifhp7Oimx1YlWVQ/s1600/2009-04-10-ztop.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 130px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO7DmM7ZoP72S_GYi6MAwzL9FZaBXRcAgUCcSw1Ad0X2o2ZB7QR3LB84kFAkDUzsa_jndrQ0p1TPbGd3MruQ0EzudJUfSFSQr7NgrXkEn6Kpi9otcr7BQS4u1Ifhp7Oimx1YlWVQ/s200/2009-04-10-ztop.jpg" border="0" alt="Sophie Calle, Prenez soin de vous / Take Care of Yourself, The Proofreader; taken from huffingtonpost.com"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407426989799497762" /></a><br />A large Sophie Calle exhibition fills 3 of the galleries, including the work I saw in Venice, 2007. I like it better here, in (I think??) a slightly less lofty space. The huge collaborative project, 'Prenez soin de vous ' (now largely turned into into English), in which Calle engaged over 100 women from various 'interpretative' professions to respond in multifarious ways to the 'break-up' email from her ex-partner, is lush, colourful, funny, rueful, really entertaining, acerbic and ultimately a rich celebration of scores of fabulous, talented, characterful women. It's also a fascinating display of 'readings', of one kind and another. It can even be seen as a sort of expansion of Raymond Queneau's notion in his <em>Exercises du Style</em>, where the same little narrative is rendered in many different versions.ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-17886593224311577762009-11-21T00:03:00.019+00:002009-12-04T00:20:22.912+00:00theatre & all (Chris Goode)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3F1t6KEAGYSfBxHyB03hOpkkAJNM7_JajVBYljK0XS6A3OvF1u4lu4PVxIVvqcm10e0mSoIDQm9TFwkeyB2zoqlk6rwatUDqcCmSUdo44_H_9Fj-ygUno6NE5MPHaSwVEBJaY4w/s1600/chris-by-malcs.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3F1t6KEAGYSfBxHyB03hOpkkAJNM7_JajVBYljK0XS6A3OvF1u4lu4PVxIVvqcm10e0mSoIDQm9TFwkeyB2zoqlk6rwatUDqcCmSUdo44_H_9Fj-ygUno6NE5MPHaSwVEBJaY4w/s200/chris-by-malcs.jpg" border="0" alt="Chris Goode, by Malcolm Phillips"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406619282673190434" /></a><br />Somewhat off-topic again, but converging maybe. The Oceanographer has restored to its extremely selective blogroll <a href="http://beescope.blogspot.com/" target='_blank'>Thompson's Bank of Communicable Desire</a>, the organ of the very wonderful theatre maker, poet, performer and (yes) thinker Chris Goode. A thread of relevance to our concerns is his interest in visual poetry. At an evening of performance 2 weeks ago at Toynbee Studios, part of Chris's <a href="http://www.leanupstream.info/" target='_blank'>Lean Upstream season</a> ongoing through November, he presented 'four panels' by the American poet <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/basinski/" target='_blank'>Michael Basinsksi</a>. Basinski's work typically consists of crammed-together drawing and hand writing -- here's a colourful example <a href="http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/deluxe/five/spm.html" target='_blank'>http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/deluxe/five/spm.html</a> (with added 'creatures'). There's a <a href="http://beescope.blogspot.com/2009/07/imagine-life.html" target='_blank'>video</a> of Chris with the young actor Jonny Liron doing the four panels together a few months back; on this more recent occasion they were joined by poets Lawrence Upton and Keston Sutherland, two notable creatures (of rather different species) of our Ocean. It was brilliant and delightful: the four voices played wild dodgems in airspace, eight hands stabbing and grabbing towards the pages for the utterance.<br />*<br />Earlier this week, the series saw Chris give a talk at Camden's People's Theatre, entitled 'The Forest and the Field', about his views of/hopes for theatre. Now, the Oceanographer's enthusiasm for Goode's works arises partly from specific admiration for his poetry, partly from personal regard, and doubtless too partly harks back to a personal brief involvement with experimental theatre (early 1970s, Cardiff ...). But more to the point is that there seems to be something widely and importantly applicable about what he does, or perhaps, about the ways he does it, even though characterising himself as someone who simply "thinks about theatre all the time". (His blog gives somewhat of the lie to that mind you: he thinks a lot about almost every cultural manifestation de nos jours.) Inter much alia on this occasion he deprecated the theatre's tendency to imitate anxiously what it perceives as competitors for people's attention: nightclubs, Twitter, whatever. And called instead for it to be itself, do its own work; and to struggle as needful with the problem of what that work might be, if not content merely with remembering one's lines and moving gracefully around the furniture. A determination to find what is really important in the metier, basically. And this isn't easy but is the proper approach, to work and to life. (The Oceanographer observes a particular resonance with libraries, which have lost all conviction and have no ideas other than 'be more like Google and Amazon'.)<br />*<br />The talk was punctuated with 'illustrations' by Sebastien Lawson, another of CG's young actor associates, demonstrating -- doing -- the kind of things Chris gets them to do, to explore and develop work. Get your kit off; with some part of your body, <em>write </em>in the air ... A lovely dance.<br />*<br />There's a new biography of Sergey Diaghilev: in last Saturday's Guardian review Simon Callow quoted a friend of Diaghilev saying that he had "an individual gift for creating a romantic working climate, and with him all work had the charm of a risky escapade". This is what it seems to be like around Chris Goode.<br />*<br />[note added 4 December 2009: Malcolm Phillips has some great photos over on Flickr, such as <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/malcsp76/4151698986/in/set-72157622918499544/" target="_blank">this</a> of the Ursonate in full swing.ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-22553916302873952862009-10-15T23:46:00.014+01:002009-10-16T15:17:32.250+01:00(off-topic) besoin de vélo<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_yyMnaN9x8r_LasTBiBOGKUC-k8nYhIFBzTxJnbRY7jWZudCacz1bU4OR0ycxWgyjRskzmJGZh_YV0QJSsk9BnKbBxQtaWecmanEekrOLk2ouy-XW4xi0tsVSUU1YNesJ0xtl-Q/s1600-h/bike-me.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 157px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_yyMnaN9x8r_LasTBiBOGKUC-k8nYhIFBzTxJnbRY7jWZudCacz1bU4OR0ycxWgyjRskzmJGZh_YV0QJSsk9BnKbBxQtaWecmanEekrOLk2ouy-XW4xi0tsVSUU1YNesJ0xtl-Q/s200/bike-me.jpg" border="0" alt="need met 27/3/09"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392978849164116418" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.paulfournel.com/" target='_blank'>Paul Fournel</a> at the Calder Bookshop this evening read from the English translation of his <em><strong>Besoin de Vélo</strong></em>. He read these short, autobiographical, light-philosophical pieces crisply, without comment but with expression. He elaborated with props -- moving little model cyclists around the table -- and eventually took off shirt & trousers to reveal the lycra beneath, and mounted his new Condor titanium bike which stood on a roller, pedalling gradually harder gears, climaxing with the much-quoted piece on Mont Ventoux:<em>The Ventoux has no in-itself. ... It's yourself you're climbing. If you don't want to know, stay at the bottom.</em> It was wonderful and I much cheered up. As he signed my books I blurted out my two (so far) non-attempts at the Ventoux: summer 1990, the planned (and indeed booked) trip abandoned when R & I split up; and March 2009 when, in no physical state to even attempt it, I was gratefully relieved of the challenge:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcu2pQnk1CmLKcCigAcDAHfgNbF8qFjdmXyV1aN7Euo_zDu4bf9L3z2R6Fyu_UZIn8-NGbNFFgQFMQI5Zpoh6z5b-FHjp95W2-ytoocH9hgyL-gBS7zh6tE2oj0Mq5w-UNRbBIig/s1600-h/affiche.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 146px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcu2pQnk1CmLKcCigAcDAHfgNbF8qFjdmXyV1aN7Euo_zDu4bf9L3z2R6Fyu_UZIn8-NGbNFFgQFMQI5Zpoh6z5b-FHjp95W2-ytoocH9hgyL-gBS7zh6tE2oj0Mq5w-UNRbBIig/s200/affiche.jpg" border="0" alt="excused 26/3/09"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392979018600365122" /></a><br />"You must go back", said M. Fournel. "Ride 28 x 28."<br /><br />The audience seemed entirely composed of cyclists rather than literary types (apart from the venerable John Calder himself), and no sufficiently coherent question framed itself in my mind about the relation between the cycling writing and the <a href="http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/oulipo/texts/fournel/45yrs_en.html" target='_blank'>Oulipo</a>, of which Fournel is President (truly, the complete Frenchman!). <strong><em>Méli-Vélo</em></strong> is a dictionary text, but are there more elaborate constraints governing these books? Fournel himself has written: "When it comes to their personal work, the members of the Ouvroir have differing attitudes with regard to constraint. Their use of constraint varies, ranging from shows of virtuosity to the greatest of discretion. The debate “Should one reveal one’s constraints?” enlivened the Ouvroir for a considerable time during the 1970s and 1980s, and responses to this question have been and continue to be diverse and paradoxical. From absolute mystery to partial revelation to total transparency, all the gradations have been put into practice, all reasoning validated."<br /><br />One question at least elicited the assertion that cycling & creativity are deeply connected: "When I ride I write.". In presenting a sublimely elegant defence of Bernard Hinault as, among the greats (Merckx, Anquetil) his ultimate favourite racer, Fournel said "I think he was a writer".<blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-36631959772790468382009-09-24T22:17:00.006+01:002009-09-24T22:35:06.704+01:00signs on transport ii (guest contribution)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNGs3rj7-sy2lWsoBkJyf3YyDTpwkjyWm7PyinLpNxzcm5ORnyYQRlCojoRNlMBmCdcndIj5PU_AmRaUmXNzEeCbM4INyNswpPCj_kdZ8xWLzcuTcFnEBTAH6KTMMzdtgvsRnkA/s1600-h/taxes_smaxes.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 130px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385150567410993522" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNGs3rj7-sy2lWsoBkJyf3YyDTpwkjyWm7PyinLpNxzcm5ORnyYQRlCojoRNlMBmCdcndIj5PU_AmRaUmXNzEeCbM4INyNswpPCj_kdZ8xWLzcuTcFnEBTAH6KTMMzdtgvsRnkA/s320/taxes_smaxes.jpg" /></a>Bill Gilonis sends this picture, from a Swiss train. Click to enlarge.<br /><br />"What Rhätische Bahn AG is <em>trying</em> to say is: Ha ha ha we're pissing on our country's tax laws, and at the same time (chuckle chuckle) Wilmington Trust Company (Delaware, USA) is pissing on the tax laws of their country. The guard confirmed that it was a mutual tax dodge but said that Clinton had put a stop to deals like this & that this particular deal would be dead when the current contract expired in a couple of years."ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-2344696613646074792009-08-23T21:20:00.009+01:002009-09-24T22:25:09.101+01:00signs on transportThis one for the layout & typography ...<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDYTWCbDvTmz-4ytoJL39MChTGjvEEkMJ1Gez1HBTBZire6GvoI6FHDkeBXG1oUR7_4Qv-moX-TXHTlCnWr4aoh-_ozvr4L01Exkh2q4qqIWgpRoF64YCBRpmGhSXD0yrufDt4w/s1600-h/coniston-rambler-505.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 127px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373257058840912210" title="Bus no. 505, Windermere-Coniston 8viii09" border="0" alt="Bus no. 505, Windermere-Coniston 8viii09" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDYTWCbDvTmz-4ytoJL39MChTGjvEEkMJ1Gez1HBTBZire6GvoI6FHDkeBXG1oUR7_4Qv-moX-TXHTlCnWr4aoh-_ozvr4L01Exkh2q4qqIWgpRoF64YCBRpmGhSXD0yrufDt4w/s320/coniston-rambler-505.jpg" /></a><br />... and this one for the subtractive intervention<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyBpDtX_pmeObjwcPDCUdcuxnhJfUL3r5aUDVCdXFe09VMUBo5mVVHIqfjgr5Nd4KvxBJkn5NQA5W5NeS_vjBzUS0IgTOAxFjPrMUAOVo7TSj3NlMWP6FAjAH3E1lUwOMuNhKO8w/s1600-h/glasgow-subway-train.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 270px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373257176778307058" title="Subway, Glasgow 2viii09" border="0" alt="Subway, Glasgow 2viii09" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyBpDtX_pmeObjwcPDCUdcuxnhJfUL3r5aUDVCdXFe09VMUBo5mVVHIqfjgr5Nd4KvxBJkn5NQA5W5NeS_vjBzUS0IgTOAxFjPrMUAOVo7TSj3NlMWP6FAjAH3E1lUwOMuNhKO8w/s320/glasgow-subway-train.jpg" /></a>ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-54732554847457050742009-08-05T23:17:00.035+01:002009-08-24T00:45:50.287+01:00pomes and gardens<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFSUnRgy4_1CUZpH1NpQEwZHoMpNrwELMfLJWHs6AUSO8qgdZMyAnOT-emDWnDyf9NIfRUuDULIK7Gv1ZeBwexkGy_gsC4A2BKM0NOX2XKV2K4oHBofcdTiGoLHov7lsCWaX9cdQ/s1600-h/gladiator.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 256px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366628617934981250" title="Rousham: the Dying Gladiator, by Peter Scheemakers, after Roman copy of Hellenistic work" border="0" alt="Rousham: the Dying Gladiator, by Peter Scheemakers, after Roman copy of Hellenistic work" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFSUnRgy4_1CUZpH1NpQEwZHoMpNrwELMfLJWHs6AUSO8qgdZMyAnOT-emDWnDyf9NIfRUuDULIK7Gv1ZeBwexkGy_gsC4A2BKM0NOX2XKV2K4oHBofcdTiGoLHov7lsCWaX9cdQ/s320/gladiator.jpg" /></a><br />The splendid <a href="http://www.tworiverspress.com/" target="_blank">Two Rivers Press </a>in Reading have just published <em><strong>Her Leafy Eye</strong></em> by Lesley Saunders: a collection of poems inspired by Rousham (a garden in Oxfordshire landscaped by Bridgeman and then William Kent), with illustrations by <a href="http://www.geoffreycarr.co.uk/" target="_blank">Geoff Carr</a>, a present-day garden designer. The book launch was held at Rousham, where Geoff led an informal guided tour, and Lesley read some of the poems in situ -- for each is motivated by a particular feature, although (refreshingly) the motif generally does not constitute the subject. The poem for the 'Dying Gladiator', for instance, entitled 'Hero', apparently ignores the striking statue and instead evokes a Handel composition (1738, contemporaneous with the garden) sung, sublimely, by a castrato, 'sexless ... winged' ... And yet, it also offers a challenge to this figure of the all-male fighter, defeated by mortality, the head drooping. The singer by contrast is 'lifting his face', the voice soars 'ever-upwards' mixing into the branches of 'an oasis-tree' so that the 'clamber and whoop-calls' seem those of a daredevil boy. And on another level again, this 'angel' in the 'heavenly air' might after all offer comfort to the warrior contemplating death. (The Dormer brothers who owned Rousham and commissioned the gardens were both soldiers, and at its completion both had died.)<br /><br />Great breadth and subtlety of thought and construction inform the whole collection, together with a huge sensuous energy: this is partly a matter of reference and image, stimulated no doubt by being in the fresh air with trees and water and artfully activated vistas, as well as the poet's evident acquaintance with early-mid-18th-century culture; but it also seems to spring through the language. 'The Genius Loci // would carry words like <em>thicket</em> and <em>covert</em> ...' as well as its other functions. The title of 'Acre' (an elegy for that unit of land measurement), tangles through the poem in a somewhat Muldoonian fashion: 'you can watch the earth curve' ... 'not scaring the longhorns' ... 'like the <em>kora</em> tuned to its own scale' and finally in the brilliant 'carpets of light'.<br /><br />The illustrations, a notable feature of Two Rivers books, are very various, quite light, sometimes playful, and distinctly subordinated to the poems. One black and white image suggested a more restrained, perhaps conservative option for a more unified book, which I might have preferred; but which was evidently eschewed in favour of colour and variety, which is fine.<br /><br />At Rousham, the 'sinuous <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/37723075@N00/150600158" target="_blank">rill'</a> was a pleasing discovery, though a surprise that it's a sort of flooded tramline or mini-canal, not a Romantic stream.<br /><br />A couple of weeks later, at <a href="http://www.littlesparta.co.uk/" target="_blank">Little Sparta</a>:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr51whEK8NqNrrHRt4DNqXb9uTTlxWUN6zmQdiJBaIRocjjSUEy4hdIgI238JCFlITUeag1rGBSI6OIC3n2Rdfx-wEUpdIvTLOMZ91npst40CSMzi0SXDt4mqo4g2XmyCmzzHoTQ/s1600-h/lade.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 258px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366665029977194450" title="Water feature at Little Sparta, by Ian Hamilton Finlay" border="0" alt="Water feature at Little Sparta, by Ian Hamilton Finlay" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr51whEK8NqNrrHRt4DNqXb9uTTlxWUN6zmQdiJBaIRocjjSUEy4hdIgI238JCFlITUeag1rGBSI6OIC3n2Rdfx-wEUpdIvTLOMZ91npst40CSMzi0SXDt4mqo4g2XmyCmzzHoTQ/s320/lade.jpg" /></a>This (badly photographed) <em>straight</em> channel surely harks back to the Rousham rill, acknowledging the charm of its 'sleeve of silk' (Lesley Saunders, 'Rill') while adding explicit reference to the transport canal. That succession of words, ending with the heavy glide of 'lade', is a whole moral philosophy. [Just looked it up in Chambers though, and 'lade' is a mill-stream in Scots... Either way though, it's about <em>working </em>water?]<br /><br />Obviously there is no end to what could and should be said about this amazing garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Can't possibly do justice right now. Actually the plants struck me this time too; the beautiful interplay of different leaves; and indeed lots of flowers, mostly wildflowers.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-YoziulA4Yc-SB5_n_OZen54Zai7vnFXcp49Tq492-x0Xz2GuIaNbyVjV1F_YItwjxVgD2-DpIaptVK0QMdB8CHjkhI0g8vY9FqLPgCG4hHszcItAgunlwyw0fXzg8VfuuHJHfQ/s1600-h/jboulton-eca.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 166px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373297242173139506" title="Janet Boulton, 'Aphrodite with Beehive & Sickle' (Little Sparta Temple interior), at Edinburgh College of Art, Sculpture Court, 30vii09" border="0" alt="Janet Boulton, 'Aphrodite with Beehive & Sickle' (Little Sparta Temple interior), at Edinburgh College of Art, Sculpture Court, 30vii09" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-YoziulA4Yc-SB5_n_OZen54Zai7vnFXcp49Tq492-x0Xz2GuIaNbyVjV1F_YItwjxVgD2-DpIaptVK0QMdB8CHjkhI0g8vY9FqLPgCG4hHszcItAgunlwyw0fXzg8VfuuHJHfQ/s320/jboulton-eca.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.janetboulton.co.uk/index.html" target="_blank">Remembering Little Sparta </a>is a rather astonishing exhibition on in Edinburgh this month. Janet Boulton knows the garden intimately and has made many watercolour paintings of it. These are one might say subjective documentary records, presenting true views in a way unlike any photograph; and they are also really fine paintings. Not just set pieces, but behind-the-scenes storage areas. And Boulton also became a good friend of (and occasional artistic collaborator with) Finlay himself, and there are paintings too of the interior of his house; close-seeing, respectful, but in some cases quite numinous views, of his collections of model boats for instance. (My photograph -- with apologies to the artist for the poor image -- shows one of the suite of views of the interior of the Temple; and also the beautiful fitness of this exhibition being installed in the enormous Sculpture Court of the Edinburgh College of Art, with its plaster casts of classical statures and reliefs.) Nothing anecdotal or biographical; no people.<br /><br />There are also works in paper relief, an unusual medium that Boulton has made her own, in which she meditates upon and responds to Finlay's work in a more like-for-like way, rather than by re-representing it. Likewise she has installed sculptures and inscriptions in her own small and lovely garden (there's an account in the magazine <em>The English Garden, Sept. 2006</em>), with references and homages from her distinct artistic lineage -- to the Cubists in particular, for instance. And then there is an actual group of Finlay's precious boats in the room, some letters and ephemera, and -- real treasures -- some of the little painted wooden toys he made in the 1960s. All in all, not to be missed; but even for those who can't get to Edinburgh there's an excellent catalogue, and images on the artist's website: click first link, above. <br /><br />Finally, one for the gladiator:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgil6ezd3KH8tRsQoQs5IKLdcE0qiKZQ5G7kGzwfFWSjTiWx5xF2a7wst46RWpK3a_yEyjEEzS5ebCeIizGArLx5mBfuDRcJ0KghyphenhyphenQPmJwXsZBg52ZBdQ-cgMYioFIz0Zyc5geonw/s1600-h/arcadia.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 256px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366674559596844930" title="Ian Hamilton Finlay and John Andrew, after Poussin, at Little Sparta" border="0" alt="Ian Hamilton Finlay and John Andrew, after Poussin, at Little Sparta" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgil6ezd3KH8tRsQoQs5IKLdcE0qiKZQ5G7kGzwfFWSjTiWx5xF2a7wst46RWpK3a_yEyjEEzS5ebCeIizGArLx5mBfuDRcJ0KghyphenhyphenQPmJwXsZBg52ZBdQ-cgMYioFIz0Zyc5geonw/s320/arcadia.jpg" /></a>ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-82893174938980447212009-07-12T17:37:00.011+01:002009-07-12T19:32:21.568+01:003-year note on bookshops<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN7wnEKpq-mVT26cdJdISalLrw17zQLDqVvRgmf_z_AIOdZEEHoIalyV7IBn00vvvwJwaT8KqIBrOwxo9Tsq5-DQg2OTlTwR-zG7adzMLsbSN7TCFbKoJajeXAFQTxeaD2JPYG8g/s1600-h/worlds-end-rev.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 257px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN7wnEKpq-mVT26cdJdISalLrw17zQLDqVvRgmf_z_AIOdZEEHoIalyV7IBn00vvvwJwaT8KqIBrOwxo9Tsq5-DQg2OTlTwR-zG7adzMLsbSN7TCFbKoJajeXAFQTxeaD2JPYG8g/s320/worlds-end-rev.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357634259695438034" /></a><br />Three years ago to the Sunday, after visiting three bookshops within walking distance of the bathysphere, the Oceanographer <a href="http://theunderfoot.blogspot.com/2006/07/in-these-ends-my-beginning.html" target="_blank">started this blog</a>. Today all three shops have closed. Most spectacularly, John Thornton, of Fulham Park Road, (allegedly) retired after making a fortune from an ignorant Church of England <a href="http://blog.myfinebooks.com/2007/09/church-sells-1-.html" target="_blank">Diocescan library sell-off</a> which included the <a href="http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2006/12/massively-grangerized-bible-sold.html" target="_blank">break-up of a spectacular extra-illustrated Bible </a>. The independent new-books Pan Bookshop in Fulham Road closed with <a href="http://www.thepanbookshop.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">some heartbreak</a> at the end of 2007. However the travel booksellers <a href="http://www.dauntbooks.co.uk/" target="_blank">Daunt Books</a> have since opened in the same premises -- must get along there. Finally I just heard this week that the World's End bookshop has closed :-(ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-80003069686820871262009-07-11T21:26:00.013+01:002009-07-12T19:38:49.548+01:00London artist-publishers old & newIn the suitable venue of the Bridewell Hall at <a href="http://www.stbride.org/" TARGET="_blank">St Bride's Printing Library</a> on Wednesday, there was a party to celebrate the 25th birthday of the magnificent <a href="http://www.bookworks.org.uk/" TARGET="_blank">Book Works</a>, who commission and publish books by artists (as well as selling publishing-related services to others). Commitment, focus and acumen must all play a part in their success, as well as (by the accounts of the artists involved) being great to work with. Now they are launching a Friends scheme: for £35 p.a. you don't get any free books, but launch invitations, newsletter and the warm glow of being a patron, which increasingly substitutes, in <em>this</em> busy life at least, for the white heat of personal creativity ... My cheque's in the post. <br />*<br />Among the hundreds of cool party guests I met the editors of London's newest artist-periodical, <a href="http://stonecanyonnocturne.com/" TARGET="_blank"><em><strong>Stone Canyon Nocturne</strong></em></a> (a.k.a. apparently <em>9-09</em>), who had <em>their </em>inaugural launch party (they called it a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayzgoose" TARGET="_blank">wayzgoose</a>) a week before. Using an Adana proofing press and a weird and wonderful collection of old types, and citing Bob Cobbing among its forebears, this is a broadsheet series whose wholemeal materiality is rather different from the subtle adaptation of trade values that enables Book Works publications to 'pass' in bookshops. Nonetheless, the first <em>SCN </em>is a short, funny text made by Clive Phillpot, the great curator-librarian and champion of artists' books, who happens also to be Book Works' Chair of Trustees. <br /><br />The 9-09 title references Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer's '60s mimeo magazine <strong><em>0-9</em></strong>, but 'Stone Canyon Nocturne' is the title of a poem by Charles Wright, which seems aesthetically at odds with everything else about the venture. A moment's web truffle however reveals (in an article by Marjorie Perloff, quoting this poem) that Wright & Acconci were exact contemporaries at the University of Iowa -- so there you go, it's ironic I suppose ... I love the <em>SCN</em> mission statement anyway: "<strong>to conflate the fractured vernacular and dissemination systems of the twenty first century with the production processes of the nineteenth</strong>". Go guys! That's another cheque in the post then.ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-64743762476245724032009-06-23T00:20:00.013+01:002009-06-29T11:54:08.648+01:00"on the verge of poetry" at the ICA'Poor. Old. Tired. Horse', once a line in a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOUlO0J55pE" target="_blank">poem by Robert Creeley</a>, taken as the title for a magazine by Ian Hamilton Finlay, has been dragged out of retirement to name <a href="http://www.ica.org.uk/Poor%20Old%20Tired%20Horse+19863.twl" target="_blank">an exhibition at the ICA</a>. The show is <em>not</em> all about concrete poetry, but aims to be "an exhibition of art that verges on poetry". It does have some fantastic concrete poetry, and allied (or resemblant) stuff from the 60s, which I think it seeks to establish as forerunner to contemporary artists' work with text, but the latter seems perhaps inevitably untogether in comparison with the poise and tightness, as well as surprisingness and exuberance of work in typewriter by Henri Chopin, the amazing dom sylvester houédard, the twitchy, obsessive Christopher Knowles; also Carl Andre, who substitutes a violence for the lightness often associated with this kind of thing ("everywhere they are shooting people"--Creeley), and (this work of his new to me) Vito Acconci. Plus there are huge libidinous word-discs by Ferdinand Kriwet (b. 1942, much younger than I assumed), and 3 of Lilian Lijn's great poem machines, spinning away.<br /><br />This one room (& Kriwet in the corridor) makes a lovely, substantial little show. It's preceded by a room of IH Finlay: directly on the wall Sea Poppy I (boat numbers in a spiral), plus another, and then some smaller things in desk cases -- postcards, prints, copies of P.O.T.H. and one or two books. (It only occurs to me now, the extent to which this is <em>not</em> an exhibition of words in books.)<br /><br />Upstairs, two more rooms that make rather different impressions. One stays with a similar period but is more about illustration, or the combining of image & (the artist's own) text: Philip Guston drawings around Clark Coolidge words, some pages of Alasdair Gray (including monumental frontispieces for <em>Lanark</em> showing his great bibliographical absorption), two Blake-ish / cartoony sheets of words & figures by Robert Smithson, and Hockney's illustrations for Cavafy, in which I suppose you <em>could</em> choose to see the etched marks of the men's body hair, patterns of bed and wall coverings or neckties etc., not to mention the shop signs, as partaking of the same calligraphic line that wrote the (absent) verse texts ... It all makes a not unreasonable juxtaposition of work, and purveys a visual messiness in contrast to the typwewriter virtuosity and/or minimalist cleanliness downstairs.<br /><br />Finally, what it might all be leading towards is a room of contemporary, younger artists' work. Frances Stark is often genuinely about an engagement with books, and her large piece, which involves transcribed text with inlays, and drawing, is materially interesting as well as funny and smart. I recall being intrigued and interested a couple of years ago at Tate Mod, by the strange, spare typed papers of Sue Tompkins. Those here have the look (misleadingly??) of innovative poetry, on faded blue letter paper (though A4), with enigmatic codes and use of almost inkless ribbon and cramped spacing. Her practice involves performance, another theme of the show which does seem to me an idea slightly too far. So I gather does Karl Holmqvist's (of whom I haven't heard before), who has here produced an A4 photocopied book of rappy verses and found photographs, blow-ups from which also paper a large expanse of the wall. It seems to me trite and trashy. I could of course be wrong; I just felt that (e.g.) Stephen Willatts on the one hand (socio-political care) and on the other Bob Cobbing (copier book publishing taste & technique) put this stuff to shame. The other things -- all worthy of more than this bare mention -- are 2 circus-style posters of Janice Kerbel; three prints by Matthew Brannon, and a film by Anna Barham, of hands rearranging transparent shapes ('<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangram" target="_blank">tangrams</a>' actually) into forms resembling letters, which apparently add up to texts.<br /><br />As with the previous ICA show -- another language theme, that time 'speech' -- one must respect & appreciate the effort that has gone into putting together useful and substantial supporting resources: the 'magazine' gallery guide that only costs £1 and is <a href="http://www.ica.org.uk/Roland%20No%202:%20Poor%20Old%20Tired%20Horse+20334.twl" target="_blank">available as a free pdf</a>; the images, texts and links on the web.<br /><br />So the tired horse being flogged here, that won't die, is -- concrete poetry? or is it just poetry? The curator says, "artists are now turning towards poetry and expressive language ... [but contrarily too he says they] explore the potential of poetry to move beyond the constraints of linguistic and graphic systems, reflecting the true complexity of communication and creating meaning that cannot be pinned down". If it's a matter of getting over words, I'm not sure that you'd need to go by this route; neither do I think it shows 'artists now' as <em>very </em>interested in poetry. Still, there is an attempt to reach towards something here, and you certainly don't want to miss seeing the show.ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-50426815004433577082009-05-22T01:32:00.006+01:002009-07-12T19:39:05.206+01:00Please buy a Salt bookYou know <a href="http://www.saltpublishing.com/" target="_blank">Salt </a>of course -- a poetry press with an innovative approach to being 'small', i.e.: Burgeon! Salt has a shameless gusto for all the dirty bits of publishing i.e. marketing hype, e-commerce, ratings, bottom lines etc., alongside a genuine informed enthusiasm for experimental writing and determination to bring it to a wide audience. I have always had a few reservations about the enterprise, its scale and its commercial approach, but really huge admiration for both its mission and its apparent success. It has certainly published at least a couple of dozen books I love by superb poets. I wouldn't want to see it fold. However Salt is in need of support, due to the recession and the funding situation, and an appeal is being circulated widely to BUY A SALT BOOK NOW. <a href="http://www.saltpublishing.com/">http://www.saltpublishing.com/</a> Don't wait, they need to be able to show an upturn in sales pronto.<br /><br />FWIW here are a few personal recommendations, most of which I own already:<br /><br />Tim Atkins, <em>Folklore</em> (scary Malvern proses -- beautiful hardback)<br /><br />Sean Bonney, <em>Blade Pitch Control Unit</em> (angry urban anarchist poems)<br /><br />Andrea Brady, <em>Vacation of a Lifetime</em> (fierce political American difficult poems)<br /><br />Andrew Duncan, <em>The Failure of Conservatism in Modern British Poetry</em> (omniscient, intelligent, infuriating critical / literary history)<br /><br />Allen Fisher, <em>Gravity</em>, or, <em>Leans</em> (Fisher's is one of the really major oeuvres of our time)<br /><br />Giles Goodland, <em>Capital</em> (impressive procedural collage of the last quarter of the 20th century)<br /><br />Bill Griffiths, <em>Mud Fort</em> (enormously talented and learned writer, entirely without pretension or obscurity, towering over this reader's head ...)<br /><br />Alan Halsey, <em>Not Everything Remotely</em> (possibly the fullest literary sensibility in the biz, extending the sense of 'literature' to the whole code of book; it comes out as some of the most original -- and, yes, obscure, work I know)<br /><br />Peter Larkin, <em>Terrain Seed Scarcity</em> (profoundly philosophical, and beautiful, work, usually prose poems concerning trees ...)<br /><br />Tony Lopez, <em>False Memory</em> (dunno, I only have other books of his but it'll be good value, trust me)<br /><br />Geraldine Monk, <em>Ghost and Other Sonnets</em> (one of my favourite poets, and this is a beautiful white book ...)<br /><br />Frances Presley, <em>Paravane</em> (Includes our collaboration 'Neither the One Nor the Other' ...)<br /><br />Ron Silliman, <em>Tjanting</em> (Monolithic, absorbing prose)<br /><br />The books I have tonight ordered are: Brian Kim Stefans's critical essays, and Robert Sheppard's <em>Twentieth Century Blues</em>.ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-1251373731097194562009-03-17T22:15:00.010+00:002009-03-17T23:05:41.487+00:00book from the sky<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQNhy7CnfrnHvxkfRgk1UoBrSOEWq_-o7aRZysM38UK8fJA7OEMO9SghQXaKhnlfiD4I6LlwTZK_HXdQE5-clL3_5JYeCtHAFwtcNiX0xBb01OjW2sBERbdrwgyih7rdegslXCeg/s1600-h/xubing.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314294405180224226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 140px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="Xu Bing, Book From the Sky" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQNhy7CnfrnHvxkfRgk1UoBrSOEWq_-o7aRZysM38UK8fJA7OEMO9SghQXaKhnlfiD4I6LlwTZK_HXdQE5-clL3_5JYeCtHAFwtcNiX0xBb01OjW2sBERbdrwgyih7rdegslXCeg/s320/xubing.jpg" border="0" /></a> To <a href="http://www.quaritch.com/">Bernard Quaritch's</a>, the booksellers, this evening, for the launch of a book they have published about the artist Xu Bing, specifically his <em>Book From the Sky)</em>, a 4-volume work written in 4,000 imaginary Chinese characters, printed using moveable type. There is acute (not to say obsessive) attention to the formal codes of book, whereas its content is, in a sense (sic) nonsense. One of the main authors of this new critical work, <em>Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book</em>, is John Cayley, who has considered Xu Bing's work often: here's a useful piece <a href="http://www.hanshan.com/specials/xubingts.html">http://www.hanshan.com/specials/xubingts.html</a> . There is an exhibition in the basement of Quaritch's, showing copies of the <em>Book from the Sky</em>, with earlier versions, printing blocks and sorts, and installation photographs of full-scale gallery installations, which seem very grand and theatrical. Some of these images are on <a href="http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/projects/year/1987/book_from_the_sky">Xu Bing's own website</a>. The critical book has a notable materiality of its own, being bound in a flexible transparent cover through which its structure can be seen.<br /><br /><div></div>ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-38634928560939009392009-03-07T09:48:00.015+00:002009-03-09T16:57:06.702+00:00Typeset by Ian Whittlesea<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijkTgqsSTCIMdkjK-62TsncUaJVN_FcDbJwXNkQi-rK4tQ-F1cS5uXFNnDFlN63mPToeMiRrR8oKfk4dJ27Bm1YVsUz22Vw2hI8ZYkDKw1CmQHhfWilYZs127yuZ2nY_ER4mlslA/s1600-h/judo_cover.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310430833753891074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 170px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 256px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="Cover, Foundations of Judo, by Yves Klein, translated and typeset by Ian Whittlesea, The Everyday Press, 2009" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijkTgqsSTCIMdkjK-62TsncUaJVN_FcDbJwXNkQi-rK4tQ-F1cS5uXFNnDFlN63mPToeMiRrR8oKfk4dJ27Bm1YVsUz22Vw2hI8ZYkDKw1CmQHhfWilYZs127yuZ2nY_ER4mlslA/s320/judo_cover.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Here's an extraordinary thing: a 1954 judo manual, translated into English and produced in a loving typographic facsimile which resembles as far as possible the visual and material properties of the original, with the same illustrations placed in the same position on the page and so forth, published by an artists' book press. The original book was by the artist Yves Klein, he who signed the sky, patented a colour, painted with women's bodies and 'leapt into the void'. Klein was also (I now learn) a serious and advanced judo practitioner, even prior to being an artist. But is this new edition a judo book or an art book? The translator is Ian Whittlesea, an artist of fascinatingly rigorous refinement <a href="http://theunderfoot.blogspot.com/2006/08/linda-stillwagon-at-pittenweem.html">noticed previously </a>by the Oceanographer, the publisher is <a href="http://www.theeverydaypress.net/">The Everyday Press</a>, "founded by artist Arnaud Desjardin to publish the work of visual artists as printed matter". Whittlesea took up judo himself alongside the translation, has achieved a black belt ranking, and it now appears to be a lifetime commitment for him.<br />*<br />The book's launch brought me for the first time to <a href="http://www.donlonbooks.co.uk/">Donlon Books</a>, a great new art & arty bookshop in Bethnal Green. It seems to stock the best stuff you'd find in the shops at the Serpentine, ICA or Tate Modern, but in an uncramped and somehow more personal environment that reminded me more of the wonderful <a href="http://www.bookartbookshop.com/">bookartbookshop</a>; and also to have an eye to rare and special books, the sort of thing you look to <a href="http://www.marcuscampbell.co.uk/">Marcus Campbell</a> for.<br />*<br />I came away with a copy of <a href="http://www.flybynightpress.com/tutu.html">Tutu Muse</a>, a recent (2007) book published by Fly By Night, of poetry by Marianne Morris. Marianne was just Donlon Books' writer-in-residence for a month! sorry I missed her. Can't report on a reading yet but Marianne's work is never less than exhilarating; materially-speaking this sturdily made substantial (47pp) pamphlet/paperback features a cover image by Marianne, and an index, of proper names, and key words mostly classified under concepts e.g. 'insects', 'food items' etc. 'love' is the most frequently occurring term (13), followed by 'death' (10). But there are numerous single instances in the 'animals', 'birds', 'fish' and 'food' groups, and quite a lot of 'colours' too (p. 19, 'terrific blue sky').<br />*<br />Also associated with the establishment is Eleanor Vonne Brown's excellent project <a href="http://www.thenewpaper.co.uk/About.html">The Newpaper</a>, "a newspaper about artists and writers who make work using the language, visuals or structure of newspapers", e.g. (in issue 2) Kenneth Goldsmith and his retyping of an entire <em>New York Times</em>, Michalis Pichler's <em>Bild </em>collages, Vonne Brown's own project '100 days', about the journalist Alan Johnston kidnapped in Gaza in 2007, and many more; as well as an article on John E. Allen, claimed as the first theorist of newspaper design. Issues are available for download from the website, but the thing itself, in tabloid format on proper newsprint is a pleasure to see and hold -- and the ink doesn't come off on your hands ...ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-17577589368456624352009-02-02T17:17:00.003+00:002009-02-08T23:57:14.181+00:00the weather<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiALVYqkL_mHjMricCjCfXqzmhyphenhyphenaq-qSYOWLLjAtnkPkE7R5bgqMhSpSha_Acf8C26z-w0Xe2jfWQmLrhnMzzKXjKkb0gkRbRfIjiMb_knCRMDUUdsj1v40YPuTVQJP2imhWU6Mtg/s1600-h/john-snow_0902.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298250855830159602" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 250px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="Brompton Cemetery, London, 2 February 2009" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiALVYqkL_mHjMricCjCfXqzmhyphenhyphenaq-qSYOWLLjAtnkPkE7R5bgqMhSpSha_Acf8C26z-w0Xe2jfWQmLrhnMzzKXjKkb0gkRbRfIjiMb_knCRMDUUdsj1v40YPuTVQJP2imhWU6Mtg/s320/john-snow_0902.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div>ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-90646143797176304242009-01-27T22:07:00.008+00:002009-01-27T22:47:10.334+00:00A book by Stuart Montgomery / Little presses display<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNk1B4ZAQu4b2ey_tPCxZs3oEL_Pb3y4oLLwTkDa6Dd3YkiI9DT-u7JgpoCvRqDYvaymFpTkSFcLtoG3fFcHaJa9U03J7MnpqmkcKn_a200SUmShTERKpUJcx3u54PJTwFypw3g/s1600-h/IMAGE_059.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5296100306944909474" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 218px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNk1B4ZAQu4b2ey_tPCxZs3oEL_Pb3y4oLLwTkDa6Dd3YkiI9DT-u7JgpoCvRqDYvaymFpTkSFcLtoG3fFcHaJa9U03J7MnpqmkcKn_a200SUmShTERKpUJcx3u54PJTwFypw3g/s320/IMAGE_059.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div>In Brighton for the Zukovsky A-24 seminar last Friday, H brought me back a present: Stuart Montgomery's <em>Circe</em>, Fulcrum, 1969, picked up for a tiny sum in very good condition (the dustjacket just cracking its surface at the spine, top edge sl. sticky). Lovely book, all brown & green; fabulous wrapper design, end-papers and title-page, image is an Etruscan bronze mirror with a superb incised depiction presumably of Odysseus and Circe. </div><div></div><div>The poetry's growing on me. A decent version of the Homeric story, verbally textured and slightly disjunctive, is interrupted towards the end by a series of shorter more detached pieces (that I like best), which include more immediate, self-reflexive elements (i.e. it mentions poetry ...).</div><div><br />Fulcrum is one of five presses featured in an exhibition on briefly now at the <a href="http://www.stbride.org/">St Bride Library</a> in London ('the world’s foremost printing, technical and graphic arts library'). The others are: Keepsake, Trigram, Writers Forum, and Gaberboccus. '"Short run": experimental book design and London's little presses' is curated by Rathna Ramanathan. </div><div>Here's a very brief account: </div><div></div><div>It is a nice, quite extensive display in three or four upright vitrines and a couple of lengthy desk cases, in the room that also houses St Bride's collection of printing presses. The displays include books of course, also some archival material such as artwork and photographs of people. The material is not all grouped by press, and the principle of arrangement wasn't entirely clear to me at the private view on Thursday [15th Jan.], but Rathna's talk gave some idea of the ways in which she has thought about the subject. </div><div><br />The show is based on Rathna's PhD, and the selection of presses one suspects was partly determined by what archives were found to be readily available, but it does make for instructive comparisons. She is also a practising designer, so it was interesting to hear her quite practical analysis of how each of these presses functioned, and the consequent stylistic and material aspects of their productions. </div><div></div><div>For instance, the Keepsake Press of Roy Lewis was the one most in the 'private press' tradition: letterpress-printed in-house by the proprietor, fairly conventional text layout (and poetic genre), illustrations commissioned from artists of note but not supposed to 'interfere' with the text; a system of signed limited editions, distributed to 'collectors'. At the other extreme, Bob Cobbing's Writers Forum of course, utterly anti-precious, using office printing technology; the production process constituted 'a performance of the text', unlimited editions, extremely open editorial policy (not based on the notion of 'quality'); linked to a whole milieu of performance, workshops, self-help and cooperation (the Association of Little Presses etc.) and general counter-cultural activity. </div><div><br />In between, Fulcrum and Trigram produced high quality books within somewhat more normal commercial parameters -- up to a point. Stuart Montgomery outsourced production to Villiers Publications Ltd., and the books looked conventional, but (aside from being an excellent list) they were distinguished by great cover designs by good contemporary artists. Also the paper is excellent and the printing looks pretty good to me. Additionally, Fulcrum produced 'special' editions of the same books, aimed at collectors. At Trigram by contrast the Benvenistes and Paul Vaughan were totally involved in the design and printing, and profoundly interested in incorporating image with text, and in the 'rhythm' of book construction. </div><div></div><div></div><div>But the centre of Rathna Ramanathan's research is Gaberbocchus, the press of <a href="http://www.themersonarchive.com/">Stefan and Franciszka Themerson</a>, for the range of texts they published, perhaps the wider European (rather than American) relationships, and for its continuous relationship with the Themersons' own creative work and very distinctive style. There are some nice examples of artwork, with text and illustrations being worked out through physical cut & paste. </div><div><br />That's an inadequate summary. The presses were noteworthy for literary reasons, several responsible for introducing important foreign writers to British readers; etc. etc. But most of that can be found out elsewhere. It's if you love the look of little press poetry books that the display is really worth a visit (free admission; somewhat restricted hours but open late on Wednesdays). LAST DAY 30th JANUARY.</div>ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31218402.post-54222066186651092742009-01-24T21:19:00.021+00:002009-02-02T17:52:11.235+00:00interiors & apparitions'"What have you been reading, then?" I ask her,<br />Experimenting, experimenting.' (Roy Fisher, from this book)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUxPJvDaD6ibRfS7bvy57fUDh9GlALpJXQCh9w9g3onIUJFtG8G96fgwDbkDF-8M-tjnPGgELEaMMy2KcvFDcqD_yJdzkCWUcNvzcfVpV7piCBvFptyPUsqpAwfqOYr3wxA2QcvA/s1600-h/royfis.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294987528504471122" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 272px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 259px" alt="Roy Fisher, Ten interiors with various figures. Tarasque, 1966" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUxPJvDaD6ibRfS7bvy57fUDh9GlALpJXQCh9w9g3onIUJFtG8G96fgwDbkDF-8M-tjnPGgELEaMMy2KcvFDcqD_yJdzkCWUcNvzcfVpV7piCBvFptyPUsqpAwfqOYr3wxA2QcvA/s320/royfis.jpg" border="0" /></a>First new old book through the door this year was Roy Fisher, <em>ten interiors with various figures</em> (Tarasque Press, 1966). Approx. 148 x 157 mm (width identical to Fisher's Bloodaxe <em>Collected</em> in fact -- which is a surprisingly nice book in a completely different way <a href="http://tinyurl.com/b4tqhy">http://tinyurl.com/b4tqhy</a> ). There are some very long lines in these poems, and it's interesting to compare this first complete publication (some had been in mags before) reproduced from typescript, with the later re-setting, to see different decisions about carry-over that are not wholly determined by the grid. Both form and content seem to point as much toward prose fiction (thinking e.g. of some work by Douglas Oliver, John Hall or David Miller) as much as to a poem sequence. A first-person consciousness interacts with another, in ambiguous, naturalistic scenarios.<br /><br />But perhaps it is more usefully related to painting than to fiction -- as by Robert Sheppard, who discusses the sequence in his chapter on Fisher in <em>The Poetry of Saying,</em> which can be previewed thanks to Google Books (sorry Robert -- I will certainly purchase a copy at some point ...). He reveals that Fisher actually used pictures as models for these poems. The cover image is (presumably) by Stuart Mills, the publisher: printed (screenprinted??) in white on the stiff black cover, I can't really fathom it though the <em>gestalt</em> seems clearly facial. Some kind of hybrid derived from anglepoise lamps and umbrellas? a pair of spectacles emitting, rather than receiving, light ...?<br /><br />Another recently-acquired piece of print to be filed today is the programme from the <a href="http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/PBS/pbs_ts_eliot.asp">T.S. Eliot Prize</a> readings a fortnight ago. These readings are always an enjoyable conspectus of 10 of the year's best mainstream collections, and the booklet constitutes a mini-anthology. Happening today to read Mary Doty's inclusion, an 'Apparition' (this seems to be a generic term used in his latest book). Scenically it too is an interior with figures: the poet hears a boy reciting a favourite poem -- Shelley's 'Ozymandias' -- in a bookstore. It's enviably articulate, artfully constructed, charming and serious. In organising the poet's emotional apprehensions into polished syntax it takes the reader on the same journey, providing everything you need -- and requiring nothing back. It's complete; and that seems its lack. In Fisher's place, the other person isn't framed away, the first person isn't assured, things aren't finished up.<br /><br />Doty's poem can be found online (try googling e.g. "loping East Texas vowels"); Fisher's Interiors are only quoted here and there.ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076915999938276950noreply@blogger.com0