May 19th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
The Library, Lady Margaret Hall
I have been offered the Lady Margaret Hall Visual and Performing Arts Residency for the academic year 2013–2014. During this time I will be based at the Oxford college, and contributing to its cultural life. Details of the residency programme will be announced soon.
May 10th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
I have been appointed as a Words Across Northumberland Writer in Residence.
Stories from the Flood places a creative writer in two Northumbrian libraries, Morpeth and Rothbury. Both towns were affected by catastrophic flooding in 2008. Susan Fletcher (in Morpeth) and I (in Rothbury) will spend time meeting staff and visitors and creating work on the themes of flooding and climate change. Having researched and written on these issues during recent residencies in Denmark and Greenland, I look forward to bringing a global perspective on climate change to the region of the UK where I grew up.
I will make an initial mobile library tour of the area on Wednesday 19 June, and will be meeting the public in Rothbury Library on 20 and 21 June.
May 7th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
On Tuesday 23rd April the annual world book night collaboration began. Since 2010 I have been celebrating world book night with Sarah Bodman and fellow book artists, including Angie Butler and Natalie McGrorty. The events have seen new books generated from novels by Patricia Highsmith, Douglas Coupland and Donna Tartt. This year, the chosen text by Raymond Carver was more minimal in two senses – firstly, it was short story rather than a novel, and secondly, as the title itself suggests, it concerns A Small Good Thing.
This year, hot on the heels of organising Bristol Artists’ Book Event, Sarah Bodman co-ordinated the event and dinner, with a collaborative text that contained contributions of small, good things from book artists around the world. A film was produced (in homage to Robert Altman’s Short Cuts - itself inspired by Carver’s stories). The film and full details of the project can be viewed on the UWE bookarts website, where there is also a free, downloadable version of the texts. These can be printed at home to create a zine, and there’s even a blank page provided to fill in with a small, good thing of your own to make the book unique.
May 6th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
John Cumming Ditty Box (2011)
My review of the exhibition Voyage: sea journeys, island hopping and trans-oceanic concepts curated by Imi Maufe and Rona Rangsch at Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany can be read online in the Huffington Post.
April 16th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
I’m delighted that the Swiss writing collective AJAR (Association des jeunes auteurs romands) will be performing written responses to my book How To Say ‘I Love You’ In Greenlandic in Brighton next month. In Notre Glace En Mots, a bilingual literary event at ONCA Gallery, eleven young authors read new poems inspired by Greenlandic words, share neologisms and tell stories about melting ice and Arctic colonialism. Full details can be found here.
April 6th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
The new issue of Stravaig, the Journal of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics is out now, and available for download here. The issue, with the theme of Coast to Coast, includes some works written during my residency in Siglufjörður, Iceland. There’s also a riddle, which came about while I was translating another riddle from the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book for an anthology of poems on the theme of water, The Third Thing, which is forthcoming from the Old Stile Press.
The image above, by Anthony Ratcliffe, accompanies a review of his exhibition Shoreline and Watershed by Roger Bygott.
March 9th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
A new feature in my Arctic Arts blog for the Huffington Post examines the work of Welsh poet Susan Richardson, who has retraced the footsteps of the tenth-century Icelandic traveller Gudrid across the Arctic. Susan’s dedication to writing on environmental themes and the considered way she charts the boundaries between exploration and exploitation has been a great inspiration to me. You can read my interview with her here.
March 6th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
BABE, Britain’s most popular book arts event, is back at Arnolfini. As well as the opportunity to see new publications by book artists from around the world, lots of exciting events are planned.
Simon Goode (Founder of LCBA) and I will be be holding surgeries for book artists in the Arnolfini Reading Room. These are an opportunity for artists to discuss and receive advice on any aspect of a book related project be it conceptual, technical or otherwise. Free, but booking essential. More details here.
February 6th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink
Typewriters: Print On Demand, curated by Angie and Simon Butler, opens at Gallery Space, Bath School of Art & Design this week. An exciting programme of events accompanies the exhibition.
In celebration of the typewriter, here’s a homage to the machines I have typed on this year.
Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck’s Mother’s Adler (1960?)
Doverodde, Denmark
The Adler at Ord Kraft Festival, Aalborg, April 2013
(note the Danish keys)
The book that Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck and I typed on the Adler -
which appears in Typewriters: Print On Demand.
Interlude – an Icelandic pencil sharpener
Underwood, Síldarminjasafn, Siglufjörður, Iceland
Not strictly a typewriter… but a World Famous 10 Key Calculator.
And finally, a typewriter from Angie and Simon Butler’s own collection …
the Olympia Splendid 33 (1968)
Angie and Simon brought the Olympia along to World Book Night Dinner in Oxford last spring, where it was used to make a collaborative bookwork, The Secrets of Metahemeralism (pictured below).
The film of the event even includes a typing soundtrack.
