Month: September 2011

Book Collecting: A Bestiary

Kay Ryan reading broadsideIt’s been a long time since I posted a book in my artist’s book collection. Then the other day I read that the poet Kay Ryan had gotten a MacArthur Fellow Genius award. I have a broadside from a reading she did at the SF Center for the Book in 2001 hanging near my own press (that’s it to the left — click on it to get a larger image and read the poem). Ryan had allowed the Center to use her poetry in a book produced by a year-long letterpress class — the text is in Centaur, set by hand, and the drawings, by Michelle Geiger, were done in photopolymer. I also have a copy of that book, which I happily re-read. The title page is shown below.

A Bestiary, title page

The Uni Project

The Uni Project in NYCThere wasn’t a library in the town where I went to elementary school. Instead we would use the book mobile — a library inside a bus that periodically came to town. It was exciting when the city eventually built a library, and it became a hub for the community, providing a place for meetings and studying as well as reading and reference material.
The Uni Project is an attempt to create communities by “temporarily transform(ing) almost any available urban space into a public reading room and venue for learning. We start with the conviction that books and learning should be prominent, accessible, and part of what we expect at street-level in our cities.” They want to augment what libraries do

Materials in the Uni are for browsing only and do not circulate. Areas of focus are children’s picture books, poetry, short works, art books, and reference titles. Special “curated” collections rely on the physical constraint of the 16″ cubes to provide concise, in-depth looks at various ideas or topics. Whenever possible, these cubes are curated by an individual who loves books and is deeply knowledgeable and passionate about a particular subject. For example, one curator is working on a cube dedicated to the origins, history, and use of knots—this cube will include a rope and cleat board for practicing basic bends, cleats, and hitches. Another is developing a cube on deafness and sound. Cubes may also be curated by an organization. Curated collections convey a sense of passion and depth too often missing from content chosen for public space. They also serve to include different “voices” in the collection, reflecting the communities where the Uni operates.

They’ve deployed one example in lower Manhattan. You can find out more about the project here, see their kickstarter campaign here. The idea for the Uni Project came out of Street Lab.

Poets for Change

100 Thousand Poets for Change​One Hundred Thousand Poets for Change is a worldwide poetry gathering and reading — happening today (Sep 24). 700 events in 95 countries are planned. The organizers say

The first order of change is for poets, writers, artists, anybody, to actually get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This will change how we see our local community and the global community. We have all become incredibly alienated in recent years. We hardly know our neighbors down the street let alone our creative allies who live and share our concerns in other countries. We need to feel this kind of global solidarity. I think it will be empowering.

Look here to see if there’s an event in your city.

From a Distant Road

“Evening Star” by John BrandiHaiku seems to be popping up all around me this summer and keeping me on track with my off-again-on-again practice of writing a haiku a day. Most of the ones I wrote through the end of July were about the lack of rainfall here in New Mexico & my very dry garden.

the sky grows dark.
thunder. lightning.
not a raindrop falls.

Once I got to Vermont, where it is very wet (rain every other day, and my sister’s house is surrounded by lakes and ponds), water became the recurring theme.

far across the lake
a loon’s cry.
cattails at attention.

While in Vermont, I attended a reading given by David Budbill, whose poetry is very haiku-like. Then last week I went to the opening of From a Distant Road, an exhibit at the Museum of New Mexico that includes John Brandi’s contemporary haiga (haiku poems accompanied by brush art work). That’s an example above, and click on it to see more of his pieces from the exhibit.
Brandi gave a talk before the reception, introducing us to the history of haiga. But most interesting to me were his comments on his practice of writing haiku — that it was often about encapsulating an “aha” moment or that he sat outside and wrote about what was happening around him. I usually write at the end of the day and use it to reflect back on what took place that day, with my generally imperfect memory.

Dryad Press

Ann Slayton’s Catching the LightWhile in Vermont I had the chance to meet two of my sister’s friends, Merrill Leffler and Ann Slayton. Merrill runs a small publishing company, Dryad Press, and his wife Ann is, among other things, a poet. Merrill showed me several of the chapbooks and prose pieces he’s published and talked about why he’d chosen various titles. Especially interesting is They’ll Have to Catch Me First about a woman who was a prisoner at Mechelen during WWII and “assigned to the painters’ workshop, she painted numbers that prisoners wore around their necks, linen armbands for other prisoner-works, and signs. During her year-and-a-half of imprisonment, Nazi officers had her do portrait paintings of themselves and mistresses — at the same time, she and other artists surreptitiously drew and painted scenes of camp life. After liberation by the Allies, Mrs. Awret was able to rescue what was left of her own artwork.” The book is a memoir that includes the artwork of various prisoners as well as interviews and with former prisoners.
On the drive home from Vermont, my sister & I read Ann’s poetry aloud, a lovely way to pass the time!