>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
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|