writing & publishing

Along with numerous writers world wide, I spent the month of April partipating in Na/GloPoWriMo (National/Global Poetry Writing Month) as I have done for the past five years. The premise is to write a poem daily based on a specific (optinal) prompt. In addition, there are links to both live and pre-recorded poetry readings, which are amazing to follow; not all live events work with the differences in time zones, but some do. These are great introductions to the work of other poets that may have been previously unknown to you, or even reminders to listen to known poets. Following the prompts has led to writing unexpected poems and learning about other poem forms. Some of the poems written during NaPoWriMo I have continued to work on, revising and tweaking, and eventually publishing. Although I began taking part in 2017, during several non-April months, I have looked back at the archive and worked on prompts for several previous years (working backwards I have one more year, 2013, to finish, which I plan to complete by the end of this year).

Last week an email interview that I undertook with Elizabeth Challinor of Orbit Magazine was published. I thought it was very appropriate to the month that was in it, as the focus of the interview was the founding of Precariat Press last year, which I blogged about here. The full interview can be read here.

Pluid Project

I can't remember how I heard about this project, but after reading about it, I decided to take part. "Pluid" means "comfort blanket" in Irish, and the point of the call-out was to think of ways we, as individuals, have found solace in this past year of covid lockdowns and isolation/separation from our usual life interactions.

I have actually not seen any major disruption to my work - in fact over the past year I have been inspired by so many things which I normally did not have access to. I have attended various artistic workshops & weekly artist talks through zoom and I have had the time and inclination to found Precariat Press, which I have blogged about here. In addition, I have been working on painting and printmaking for an upcoming exhibition next year, so I have been quite busy professionally. I have of course missed out on being able to meet up with friends physically and some major travel plans were cancelled last year (and I am not making any travel plans for this year). But I have been enjoying a lot of remote international entertainment - archaeology and music podcasts, theatre, opera, poetry readings, literary events, and music - and quite a lot of this I would have been unable to attend in person if there was no pandemic!

So essentially I would say that I found solace through activity!  I decided to make images inspired by my daily park walks and continuued my experiments with contact printmaking, after taking the Graphic Studio Dublin zoom workshop (facilitated by Clare Henderson) a awhile ago. I created several pieces in the format required by Pluid. Rosehips, ink on kozo paper (contact print), 15cm x 15cm, 2021.

Wild Rose, ink on kozo paper (contact print), 15cm x 15cm, 2021.

I was happy with two of the prints, so packaged them off and sent to Pluid to be included in the national comfort blanket exhibition. I am also happy if these prints help raise some funds for Piéta House, which I think is an amazing charity.

Home Sweet Home Goodbye published

I founded Precariat Press in the spring of this year with the publication of my first chapbook of poems in mind; My husband, James Hayes, designed the logo for me after an evening of brainstorming. The cover design is based upon my earliest existing piece of "art" - a goodbye card I made for my grandparents when they were returning to Ireland from a visit to Toronto in 1967. I talk about that in a previous blog, here. This was the first time I met them, and the card was found in my grandmother's handbag after she (my Oma) died in 1980 and it was returned to me.

I have spent the months in lockdown (the first one!) designing and printing up the cover, which I have blogged about here and here, and choosing the final poems to be included. The chapbook contains a mix of poems previously published in other journals (which I acknowledge) and work that I think are deserving of publication! They are a mix of oldish poems (probably revised somewhat) and newish poems - spanning 40 years of writing poetry.

I have bound Home Sweet Home Goodbye in the traditional chapbook binding style, i.e., three-hole bind, with cotton thread. It contains 17 poems over 25 pages of poetry, and the cover is a monochrome linoprint. It is approx A5 in size, a standard chapbook size. I have blogged about the book mockup and binding here, here, and here. This is a limited edition publication, with 50 copies only. 

binding the chapbook

 

In my previous blog, here, I discussed the preparation for binding and gave links to all my blog posts relating to this chapbook. With everything ready, the next step is simply to bind the books!

In creating a traditional poetry chapbook (less than 40 pages) I also decided to bind the book with thread (as opposed to stapling) and use a very simple saddle stitch with three holes in the spine. I have made a diagram of the thread journey below, where A, B and C represent the spine holes. The solid lines with arrows represent the direction of the thread on the exterior, and the broken lines with arrows represent the direction of the thread on the interior. Just as a reminder, the pages should be placed inside each other, as per the right side of my diagram.

This image shows the start, the first threads going into the centre hole. Please note, that though a large-eyed, fairly strong needle is necessary to hold 6-strand cotton (embroidery) thread, the needle should not be a fat needle, as used in leather binding as this will expand the binding holes and there is more risk of tearing the paper. Leave a few inches of thread outside the spine hole in order to tie a knot when the thread finishes its binding journey.

The thread appears in the centre of the chapbook.

The thread then follows the interior route to the bottom hole B (in fact it does not matter whether it goes to the top hole or the bottom, but just choose one consistently).

On the outside spine, the thread takes a long journey to the top hole C and goes to the interior back to A and out again to the exterior spine. Here one ensure that the long spine thread is in between the entry and exit threads before tying a simple knot or two. This will ensure that there is no floppy long thread on the spine: the exterior binding will appear the same as the interior except for the loose threads at entrance and exit points. 

On my books I decided to leave these threads at about 6 cm as a design feature, first tying knots in the thread ends to prevent separation of the strands.

Preparing to bind the chapbook

By request, my husband (artist James Hayes) made me a beautiful (all-powerful, almighty, awesome) awl for my birthday this year. He even made a holder for it to protect the sharp point -

and to protect me from the sharp point! I used to have an awl but it went AWOL some years ago, and last year when I did a lot of bookbinding I resolved to get another because I was fed up using pushpins! With the founding of Precariat Press in the spring of this year, I knew I'd be doing more bookbinding, so getting a new awl was mandatory. So when this gorgeous tool was made specially for me, I swooned!

Once I had decided on the concept, design, cover image & printing, the poems to be included and the layout (all of which I discussed here, here and here) the final step was to collate and bind. Collating all the pages together into booklets also required a lot of folding with my trusty bone folder.

I had a second mock-up book (from which I made corrections) and I measured out where the 3 binding holes would be placed and, after punching these holes used the individual pages as templates for the final books. I had decided early on that I would be doing a traditional 3-hole chapbook bind.

Once binding holes had been punched in all the chapbooks (it is an edition of 50), I was ready to start binding. I had picked up 6-strand cotton thread in a colour to match the cover some weeks ago. In next week's blog I will discuss the journey of the thread to bind the chapbooks.

life during lockdown... Part 1

My teenager keeps saying to me "nothing has really changed for you" as I have generally continued with my my work in"business as usual" mode during this entire period of lockdown. Although I have missed the more social aspects of my life especially friends and my time at the weekly ceramics workshop at Signal Arts Centre, I have found myself to be continuously busy with my art & writing, keeping in touch with people by telephone, Zoom, letter, email, Whatsapp and Skype. Perhaps I could even be accused of being more diligent at maintaining social contacts!

But shortly after lockdown started in March, I finally decided it was a good time to self-publish my first chapbook of poems. The first step to doing this was the founding of Precariat Press. After a brainstorming session, my husband, artist James Hayes designed a logo for me. And so it began! I have blogged about this previously here.

In April, I was inspired by Austin Kleon's Instagram account; he was making daily zines and I wanted to know how to make them. Kleon and a number of other bookbinders who have posted on YouTube have given really simple instructions for zines that can be made, with folding and tearing (or cutting) from a standard page. I did my own experiments with larger pages and heavier materials and blogged about it here. For a zine with more pages, simply glue two or more together!

Every year I participate in the annual incognito fundraiser for the Jack & Jill Children's Foundation. Due to Covid19 this year, the fundraiser was solely online. Normally images are made available for perusal on the incognito website, and then they are shown over a 3 day period at a Dublin gallery in April. This year there was also going to be an exhibition at a Cork gallery in May. Instead, a way to both see and buy the work online was made available. The artworks are all postcard sized and cost the same amount (€50) with the name of the artist only being revealed to the buyer after payment is made. I think the Dublin offering sold out within 15 minutes. I had two pieces in the Dublin exhibition (a detail of one being on the farthest left row, second from top).

One of my pieces (I donated three) was in the Cork show, which I believe also sold out quite quickly. My collage is second from left, second row down. I have blogged about previous incognito fundraisers here, here, here, and here.

In May I did the compositional sketch, which I will have as a reference when working on another large painting, Knockeen, as part of my current series Memory Is My Homeland. I have blogged about the origins and previous work in this series here, here, here, here, here,  and here.

I was, of course, simultaneously working on the lino design for the cover of my poetry chapbook, which would be titled Home Sweet Home Goodbye. The design is based on a childhood farewell card I made for my grandparents when they were returning to Ireland after their first visit to Canada (where I was born and grew up). I did several blogs about the design origins and progress of the linoprint here, here and here.

While in lockdown, as well as making work, I continued to browse for "virtual" opportunities. I found it quite interesting that submitting images to exhibitions taking place on the likes of Instagram made it possible to submit internationally. I submitted an image of Room Mate, a recent work from the Memory Is My Homeland series to an Instagram exhibition open call for work created during lockdown which responded to certain words. I have blogged about this oilstick drawing here and here. It will be featured in the Do It Yourway Instagram exhibition on August 14. The words that I feel the work responds to are "hard", "soft", and "reflect". Certainly my reasons for those words are apparent when I blogged about the piece here.

I have also continued to submit written work in answer to specific calls or open reading periods. Dwell Time is a mental health organisation in the UK and they put out a call for written and/or visual work in response to the lockdown. As I had specifically written several poems on this theme, I fired them off and they were published both on the Dwell Time website and its FaceBook page. I subsequently posted them on my own social media pages. Here is one of the three.

In addition to writing, making artwork, virtually socialising and reading I have been totally enjoying virtual music gigs (John Otway, Josh Ritter, Lisa Hannigan), concert film streaming premieres (Iggy Pop, New Order, Nick Cave), poetry readings (Hollie McNish), theatre (The National Theatre UK, The Druid Theatre IRL, The Abbey IRL, and Stratford Festival Canada) and opera (The Met NYC). Early on in lockdown a friend sent me a link to someone who had posted links to education, sports, business resources, health and entertainment. This was extremely helpful and alerted me to many things which are being made available, at no charge, to help keep people sane during this trying time. That is how I was alerted to free streams of first-class theatre and opera. For me the most amazing event I was lucky to see was The Met's production of Philip Glass's opera Akhnaten. It was phenomenal and indescribable and for me, something that I never would have had the chance to experience if there hadn't been this lockdown!

printing chapbook covers

A lot of work went on before I was ready to print the chapbook covers, which you can see in previous blogs here (the initial sketch & press founding), here (the design origin story), here (design, lino-cutting & first test print), and here (creating the chapbook mock-up).

Last fall, I had mixed up a really nice colour using a bright pink ink and a blue ink from Speedball and tested the colour on another lino block, so I had a fair idea that I wanted to use this purply colour for my chapbook covers. Just as I was pulling out the inks and a jar to mix up a large batch, I found that I had already ordered a violet ink. When I looked at the ink I realised I did not have to do any mixing as this was indeed the colour I had in mind!

As I knew from last year's linoprinting, a heavy card "window" had to be custom made in order to facilitate relief printing on a regular flatbed press. In addition, the "window" was made to the size of the paper I was going to use for the covers so registration is automatic!

I was thrilled to start printing, and though my enthusiasm led to over-inking on the first print, everything else was going according to plan.

This is the first batch of prints drying on a blanket on the living room floor. I have borrowed an ancient book press from another artist friend and will flatten the covers when they have dried.

This is the third batch of prints, and I am quite happy with the results. My living room is fairly small, and the drying area takes up all the floor space, so with this in mind I have a schedule of printing in batches every couple of days.

starting the chapbook mock-up

I have been working away at the chapbook, sorting and shortlisting poems, making decisions regarding the cover (a lino print), etc. -- more details are in previous posts, which can be found here. In researching a poetry chapbook format, I realised I must create a mock-up chapbook in order to finalise what goes where! For instance, I need to allocate pages for acknowledgements, contents, press information, author information, interior title page, any blank pages and a page for the edition number with press logo. This will be a 32 page A5 chapbook, so the first thing to do was get 4 sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half (utilising both sides, each A4 page is equal to 4 pages).

Because I plan to do a 3-hole traditional chapbook binding, the folded pages fit inside each other.

The binding will be visible on the exterior and at the centre of the chapbook, where the binding knot will be tied at the interior centre.

The cover, here represented by grey card, is sligtly bigger than A5 as it must wrap around and enclose all the chapbook pages.

This means that the page itself is slightly larger than A4. With this measurement, I can now cut the paper for printing the lino. I am planning to finish the lino block and have the printing of the cover completed in July.

Home Sweet Home Goodbye - chapbook

In a previous post I spoke about founding a press to produce my first chapbook (info here) and in another post I spoke about the card I made my Grandmother in 1969 (info here), which has inspired the title and cover design for this first chapbook of poems. To get a better idea of lino design, I used a black marker to create sketches for the cover design sketches. This allowed me to immediately see what changes I needed to make before proceeding.

In a later sketch I also used a white pen to make contrast more apparent.

To transfer the design onto the lino block, I used the simple, old-fashioned technique involving tracing paper

and graphite.

Once the tracing paper was ready, it was affixed to the lino block using masking tape (ie, the tracing paper was taped down on the other side of the lino block).

This picture shows the ready-for-cutting lino block beside the template sketch.

This picture shows that I have started cutting into the lino! NB the picture was taken at an angle in order to see the groove marks that cutting makes.

Precariat Press

It's been a good few years that I have been thinking of putting together a collection of my poetry and wondering how I should go about it. While self-publishing has, in contemporary times, always gotten a bad rap as "vanity", historically it was crucial to artistic survival: the Woolfs founded the Hogarth Press and printed Virginia's work, and earlier, across an ocean, Walt Whitman published his enduring work Leaves of Grass himself. Most recently I have been inspired by American writer, Jim Trainer, who vowed to publish a collection of his poetry annually for ten years (I have 2018 & 2019 collections, but I think he started in 2015). I was originally drawn to his writing through his monthly article, The Coarse Grind, and his own blog of personal journalism, Going for the Throat, before I discovered that he was a poet too. So, in good company I set about founding my own press. After sessions of brainstorming with my husband, artist James Hayes, a name for the press and an image for its logo were decided. James designed this logo in record time for me.

I had already decided that my first collection would be a chapbook, with the title and cover image based on the bon voyage card I made for my grandparents after first meeting them in 1967. I gave an explanation of what led to that meeting and images of the original card in my blog post last week. Here is the idea sketch for the cover. I will do a full drawing as it will be a lino block print. I was dithering about handpainting areas of colour, but it is most likely to be monochromatic. While I have use of a printing press, I plan to print the front and back covers as one page, also making a linocut of the logo, so colour has yet to be decided.