A Dealer On Either Side of the Pond

The launch of How to Say 'I love you' in Greenlandic was celebrated at The Poetry Society in London on 22 September. The edition is now available for sale. Bookselling is a slow business, so I am very grateful to two venerable dealers in fine press and illustrated books for adopting my book and sharing the dirty work with me.

In the UK, my Arctic alphabet can be found on the shelves of Collinge & Clark, just down the road from the British Library in London. Oliver Clark has featured the book on his sparkling new website, which offers the undisciplined browser an endless distraction of paper delights. Customers can sign up for the erudite newsletter and benefit from 10% discount on all current stock. Collinge & Clark have been providing bibliophiles with works on printing and typography since 1989, but the shop (above) will be best known to many as the set for cult comedy Black Books.

I'm delighted that the work has also been featured in Catalogue 70 from The Veatchs, also specialists in the history of the book. Bob and Lynne Veatch's shop in Northampton, Massachusetts, stocks examples of book-making from all periods, early and modern fine printing, historical and publishers' bindings, and designer bindings. Catalogue 70 focuses on the genre of the alphabet book - the compilation is 'a fabulist's wishlist' (Maureen Cummins), with alphabets ranging from Aphid to Zebra (Beo Press), Aqueduct to Urinal (Parrot Press) and - for the more arcane - a set of Ohgam characters by Eileen Hogan. I hope a few American collectors will find their way to the Arctic through the Veatchs' doors.

Horizon: The Art Of Losing

Photographs hanging in Scott’s Expedition Hut, Ross Island, Antarctica

(Photo: Velvet Android/Flickr)

The latest issue of Horizon, a review of literature and art, is now online. The offerings selected by editor Katy Evans-Bush include my essay 'The Art of Losing' on the artist Emma Stibbon's Antarctic Series.

Udkant: On The Margins

Doverodde Book Arts Festival IV

Limfjordscentret Doverodde Købmandsgård, Hurup Thy, Denmark

Plans are afoot for the Doverodde Book Arts Festival at Limfjordscentret in Denmark in May 2012. This year the theme of the festival will be Udkant which can be translated as 'on the margins'. Mette-Sofie Ambeck, book artist and the Festival's Project Consultant, says that Udkant may mean 'being on the edge of what is allowed – being furthest away from the centre – or on the edge of a remote place like a forest'.

Those visiting the Festival to experience the exhibitions, workshops and book arts symposium will be sustained by music performed by cellist Regina Brunke and cakes baked in the 'book cafe'.

This year the Doverodde Book Arts Center will appoint a writer-in-residence to produce a body of work in response to the nature and culture of the Limfjord. I'm excited to have been invited to fill this position and I look forward to working in this beautiful and historic area of north-west Denmark in the month leading up to the Festival.

Illustration

The summer issue of Illustration is full of drama. It appears that the Pre-Raphaelite illustrator formerly known as Florence Harrison was not the true Florence Harrison at all, and that there were hidden depths to two of the earliest illustrators of Pickwick Papers, Robert Seymour and Robert William Buss. While Oliver Messel’s reputation rests primarily on stage design, his distinctive illustrative work is no less entertaining. There's also a reconsideration of the work of Thomas Bewick prompted by Nigel Tattersfield's monumental new study. At the contemporary end of the spectrum, look out for 'Letters from the Arctic', a feature on How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic.

The magazine can be found at a number of venues including the British Library and Tate Britain bookshops; the feature on How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic can also be accessed online, thanks to Cambridge University.

The Cemetery

'The Cemetery' - a pantoum from my Arctic series - has just been published in the online magazine Ink, Sweat and Tears.

News from New York

The Night Hunter

Roni Gross - a longtime friend and more recently collaborator - has put up some amazing images of recent work on her website. Here you can see a generous spread of the Zitouna offerings that Gross has printed biannually for Valentine's Day and Hallowe'en since 1989. To me, who only gets around to making a Christmas card every other year, this output seems phenomenal. Especially when the rest of Gross' work is taken into account. More of that here, too: a selection of poetry broadsides, and for those curious to see more images of The Night Hunter than have appeared on this blog to date, there's a slideshow of sorts, with the artist's commentary.

Tertulia: 14th July 2011

A Tertulia? The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie, Luis Buñuel

‘Tertulia’ is a Spanish word ordinarily applied to social gatherings with literary, artistic or bohemian overtones. "One would speak of ‘going to a tertulia’ as in ‘going to a dinner’," explain Phil Owen and Megan Wakefield, founders of Bristol’s Tertulia - a salon for people working with or interested in language from a range of different disciplinary and methodological perspectives.

Tertulia is held in the Reading Room at the Arnolfini. The next salon falls on Bastille Day, 14th July, 7.30pm (free entry). Responding to a gauntlet thrown down in Cambridge last month, I’ll be presenting How to say ‘I love you’ in Greenlandic through performance rather than print, re-imagining it as a sound work that befits the oral culture it documents. I’m looking forward to seeing the other contributions, particularly Rachel Flynn’s analysis of Graham Sutherland’s writings on the landscapes of Wales and Mary Crowder’s subversion of medical texts. Not to mention the coda: ‘Sam Playford-Greenwell will attempt to balance a banana on his head.’