Artist Ron Arad is mostly known for designing chairs, but for an exhibit this month at the Timothy Taylor Gallery in the UK he’s designed this steel bookshelf. According to this website it’s mysteriously called “Oh, the farmer & the cowman should be friends” (a line from a song from the musical Oklahoma). To give you an idea of the scale, it’s about 11-1/2 feet tall by about 19 feet wide (138-3/8 x 224-5/8 x 15-7/8″ or 351 x 570 x 40 cm).
The Etsy Bookbinding Team celebrated the International Edible Book Festival by holding a virtual exhibition and competion on April 1st. The festival was started in 2000 by Judith Hoffberg; the festival website says “April 1st is the birthday of French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), famous for his book Physiologie du goût, a witty meditation on food. April fools’ day is also the perfect day to eat your words and play with them as the ‘books’ are consumed on the day of the event.”
You can see all the books submitted in this Flickr pool. The winners (for best overall, best technique… ) are listed here. Pictured is Raland Kinley’s “Ham Pamphlet” or more simply known as the “Hamlet”. Materials: sliced ham, fettuccine noodle; binding: 3-hole pamphlet stitch.
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| Probably the most well-known haiku is Basho’s poem about a frog and a pond. See Rexroth’s translation at right or 31 translations on the Bureau of Public Secrets or Chad Sweeny’s 33 translations. | ||
My first encounter with haiku was one rule: 3 phrases of 5, 7, 5 syllables respectively. Later I learned about the “cut” line, where the poet uses punctuation such as a dash to divide the poem into two juxtaposing or contrasting parts. As I read more about haiku in both Japanese and contemporary English and began writing my own, I gave up on the first rule — “syllable” isn’t quite what the Japanese form uses and some haiku enthusiasts say 11 syllables and a 3-5-3 syllable meter is closest to the quality of the Japanese form while others prefer the sort of “free form” haiku that I write (there’s a nice explanation of this here by Keiko Imaoka.) Some of Kenneth Rexroth’s translations of famous Japanese haiku use a free form style:
Autumn evening —
A crow on a bare branch.An old pond —
The sound
Of a diving frog.
So probably I don’t write haiku at all, but something called “micro poetry” (see this article on Jim Murdock’s blog about short form poetry ) — but I’ll continue to be entraced by inventing 2 images in 3 lines.
 Paraphernalia’s poetry brooch |
Today is the first day of National Poetry Month in the US. Their website has a state-by-state calendar of events, they’ll email you a poem every day this month, and this year there’s a great poster with a quote from T. S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Do I dare / Disturb the universe?While there are lots of blogs and websites devoted to poetry, one I especially like is Poem of the Week — here’s a recent post:
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm The house was quiet and the world was calm. Was like the conscious being of the book. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Wanted to lean, wanted much to be The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself |
I think of “altered books” as books that have been cut up or colored. Jennifer Khoshbin does that as well as making “music books” — vintage texts with small hand cranks — turn the crank with your ear to the book to hear a tune. Below left, Donkey John, a music book. On the right, Prove it, a cut book with a pop-up. You can see more on her website ( you can also hear some of the tunes in the music books).
The website of Reliure Hélène Francoeur Bookbinding in Québec has beautiful photographs of their studio and work. Including a peaceful slideshow of sewing a book on tapes called Evening Sewing and a monthly feature of photographs of favorite bindings.