yup, books are objets d'art, and sudden illuminations on manuscript and the
mixed media to come in cyberspace, and grainy or plastic textures in the
hand and a problem with space in the home and something disregarded because
free in public libraries, but before that, before even they are text, before
they are detonations and pecussions on air, when they are poetry they are
silent sound in the mind, sound that can be carried about independent of
buildings or shelves or mains supply or censors.
as did Mandelstam's widow and friends with his late poems under Stalin.
sub-vocals turned quantum, pervasive and intangible as air.

david

----- Original Message -----
From: "Elizabeth James" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "british & irish poets" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2000 1:41 PM
Subject: Re: artists' books


> >abso-bloody here here. thank you LUTELY!
> >
> >At 7:35 +0100 15/4/00, David Kennedy wrote:
> >>a greater
> >>sense/understanding of the book as an object and of the text and the
> book
> >>making a total work as opposed to writing poems/making texts that are
> just
> >>printed in books. Or to put this another way, I've learnt that the
> book can
> >>be as much part of the form of the work as the way lines are arranged
> on the
> >>page.
>
> Yes; and thank you indeed. I think it *was worth expanding; in terms of
> being a suggestion to David Morley's prospective Centre; and also that
> this apprehension is perhaps quite rare among us. It took me ages, even
> after starting to work in an environment where the 'art of the book' is
> a curatorial focus, that I tumbled to it, as it were; willy nilly all
> books *are objects, not just 'texts' and they can't but communicate
> through every perceptual attribute even if subliminally; and then if you
> are a poet it might seem logical to attend to all these attributes, for
> where is the poem's margin, insofar as a reader experiences it?
>
> Of course not everyone wants to go down this route with their writing,
> or not all the time (pace Lawrence: >Sometimes one wants the simplicity
> of a typed text>) and that's surely fair enough; but insofar as the
> limitations are conceptual and, especially, practical, that's maybe
> where an institution could do something for us. As far as I know,
> bookmaking is presently taught only in art colleges, or in the context
> of art education anyway. It couldn't but be valuable to plant it into
> the context of writing education. So, yes, I would second David K's
> suggestion strongly.
>
> Lawrence, I much appreciate your post, thanks for taking the time. I
> agree with all you say, in fact I think they should engage you to give
> the inagural lecture on the subject at the Warwick University Centre for
> Contemporary Writing. My clumsiness was at least partly a result of not
> wanting to prejudge what might be being proposed. I think there are a
> lot of really nice, basically 'illustrated books' in the world that lack
> your key "necessity"; and yes it's because I agree that a poet might *be
> 'the artist' of the book that I think that a programme aiming to promote
> poetry, if it projected no more than 'bringing artists and writers
> together' to produce books such as these (i.e. if it failed to >rule out
> ... collaborations which provide optional parts of an assembled product>
> to adapt your quote), it would be missing a big opportunity. (Not to
> *preclude collaboration, or skills exchange, as you also make clear.) I
> was hoping that
> David (K) meant better than that; and he did.
>
> elizabeth
>
>
>
>
>



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