My Book Spine Poetry

As promised, here are my own poetic book spine offerings:

I'm sorry that the image quality etc isn't great. If you're friends with me on facebook, you can see it as an album (which may or may not be better) here.

Book Spine Poetry

I recently discovered the art of Book Spine Poetry, the act of making poems out of book titles or at least the titles given on the spines of books. It's a relatively straightforward idea, but as an art or poetic form its rather playful, taking titles as ready-made poetic phrases and linking them together to create a new poetic object.

The master of book spine poetry is artist Nina Katchadourian, whose Sorted Books project has been ongoing nearly 20 years. The Sorted Books project began in 1993 and saw the artist arrange books from numerous lookings - private homes to public libraries and specialised books collections. Whilst the artist herself claims that "Taken as a while, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncracies, and inconsistencies - a cross-section of that library's holdings", her work also producing some interesting literary results. Here are two of my favourites (my organisation of typed text):

Book spine poetry appears to be taking off on the web, perhaps because it seems to offer the same sort of authorly promise as web2.0 - it is an art everyone can do. Indeed, there are libraries in America holding Book Spine Poetry competitions. Another writer of Book Spine Poetry is cultural commentator and literary reviewer Maria Popova, who posted her attempts on her blog Brain Pickings. Again, two favourites:

Anyway, I thought I'd have a go at some Book Spine Poetry myself! If you're interested you can see my own Book Spine Poems on the next blog post here.

Find the Fragrant World

Anyone who knows me will know I'm slightly obsessed with the music of Yeasayer, having seen them play in June 2010 on Governor's Island in New York. I've been eagerly anticipating their third album Fragrant World, not due out until 21st August, and the wait has just got all the more exciting!

Back in May, an unexpected CD-shaped parcel was pushed through my letter box. On opening, I found it to be a letter from the Band and an advanced CD featuring the song "Henrietta". Dated 'May 1st, 2012', it read:

Dear Human Being,


Enclosed is a burned compact disc version of "Henrietta," a single from our upcoming album. We wanted you to hear it first. Please know you were chosen (1 of 200) at random from over 7 billion people on the planet earth. Pls share w/ the internets.


More details soon.


X- Yeasayer


I was of course insanely excited by this, played the CD straight away and instantly loved it! The band reinforced the online hype this physical release generated by lucky fans like myself with TXTSPK (textspeak) announcements on social media platforms Facebook and Twitter - HNRTTA. This was followed with the internet release of another track "Longevity", also promoted using social meadia - LNGVTY - with both singles available as free digital downloads to fans who preorder the Fragrant World album directly from Yeasayer's website.

Despite this excitement back in May ("Henrietta") and then late June ("Longevity"), I thought I'd just have to be patient for the album's release towards the end of August. I was wrong. Yesterday the band made the following announcement on both their Facebook and Twitter feeds:

Clearly, fans were being fed another cryptic clue. Yet try as I might, I couldn't make PSCYVOTV into a word or a track name, based on the tracklistings for Fragrant World on the internet. Today, the band issued the following letter/photograph:

We have received a message that we are on the verge of embargoed information being leaked through the cracks of the digital universe. Once again an attempt to tell the story before our months can spit. In order to have the edge we have created PSCYVOTV standing for PREEMPTIVE SELF-COMMISIONED YEASAYER VORSTELLUNG OR TRACH VISUALISER.


Using the talents of Yoshi Sodeoka we have created a moving visual for every song on our new album FRAGRANT WORLD and have hidden them all over the internet. The visuals will live on the web until Friday Aug. 3, at 8pm EST. You'll have a few days to find, listen, and most importantly, hear the album from our hands first. at 8pm sharp, PSCYVOTV will be removed.

A challenge has been issued - a kind of 21st century online whacky races for music lovers is underway. Wired magazine have already described the operation as a "scavenger hunt" for fans.

Yeasayer's game isn't just novel though; its downright clever, utilising what Henry Jenkins has called convergence: "the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between media industries, and the migratory behaviour of audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want" (Convergence Culture: 2). Yeasayer fans will access the music in digital and multimedia forums, before they get their hands on their physical CD. And for fans who do engage in this treasure hunt, the investment in the music itself is likely to be all the greater, since they have actively participated in its discovery/uncovery. For these fans finding the tracks is an immersive investment: Finding the Fragrant World means entering it.

I'll certainly be joining the search (and I'll do my best to keep you updated on twitter). For now, I'll leave you with the first track to have been found - Track 3. "Blue Paper".

So, "Blue Paper", "Henrietta", and "Longevity" all found: 3 down, 8 to go!


Here's an Update with links to all the tracks [though they'll be gone by Friday 8pm]:

1. Fingers Never Bleed
2. Longevity
3. Blue Paper
4. Henrietta
5. Devil and the Deed
6. No Bones
7. Reagan's Skeleton
8. Demon Road
9. Damaged Goods
10. Folk of the Schtick
11. Glass of the Microscope

Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature

Over the last few years, I've been involved in co-editing the The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature with Joe Bray and Brian McHale and I'm so pleased that it's finally been published (in June of this year)!

A taster of the book, by way of the table of contents and the editorial introduction to the volume, can be found on the website for Jacket2, an online magazine on modern and contemporary poetics.

For those interested, access it here.

"You've never experienced a novel like this"

About two and a half years ago, I wrote an essay on Steve Tomasula's award-winning new media novel TOC for a special festschrift on Tomasula's work for Electronic Book Review.

The collection of essays is now live on EBR's pages here, including my own piece ' "You've never experienced a novel like this": Time and interaction when reading TOC'.

Hope you enjoy!

The Book That Can't Wait

Buenos Aires-based bookshop and publisher Eterna Cadencia (with the aid of marketing agency DRAFTFCB) have created a profoundly ephemeral literary object in the form of El Libro que No Puedo Esperar, or to translate that into English The Book That Can't Wait.

What makes The Book That Can't Wait so unique is that it has been printed using special ink which, once exposed to the air, will begin to disappear.


The book comes securely sealed, air-tight, but from the moment it is opened, the words will begin to vanish. Within two months, the fiction contained in The Book That Can't Wait will seem to be just that - a fiction - having completely disappeared, the book and its blank pages the only surviving remnants of the stories they once contained.



The Book That Can't Wait is actually a special edition of The Future is Not Ours: New Latin American Fiction, a collection of short stories by emerging Latin American Writers edited by Diego Trelles Paz. It seems that the motivation for the special edition was to raise awareness of new writers - to make reading their works a priority and to provide them with greater exposure. And on all accounts this seems to have worked! The special edition sold out and certainly had a media-buzz surrounding it. Moreover, the marketing campaign won three Gold and a Bronze Lion at Cannes 2012. Here's the promotional video:

As for me, I'm still getting my head around the idea. Both the publishers Eterna Candencia and the ad agency DRAFTFCB contextualise the design by reference to contemporary anxiety over the death of the book, the threat of extinction to the book as physical object created by digital technologies. The Book That Can't Wait certainly engages in a self-effacing debate about its own materiality and immateriality. Yet as a reader and someone who appreciates the book as artefact, I feel strangely torn. On one hand, the concept of The Book That Can't Wait is beautiful and its transience is surely at the heart of this. But I can't help thinking that in three months from purchase date when I find myself looking down at empty pages, I might feel somewhat cheated. For now, like the future pages of The Book That Can't Wait, I'm lost for words.




(With thanks to my friend Tom Stafford for bringing The Book That Can't Wait to my attention.  Visit his blog Idolect.) 

Why We Broke Up

I recently read the book Why We Broke Up, a fiction written by Daniel Handler and featuring art by Maira Kalman. The novel itself is a story of first love, or perhaps first infatuation is the best way to describe it. Why We Broke up tells the story of Protagonist and geeky old-movie enthusiast Min ("short for Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom" p.18) Green's relationship with high school (American) football jock Ed Slaterton.


Why We Broke Up is a young adult book, and reads like one. I don't usually go for books in this genre (though I loved The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larson) but at the time I wanted something light and this ticked that box. Interestingly, when reading this, there is a sense of incredible hindsight: While I did find it reminiscent of experiences of one's first school boyfriend, what struck me was that although it is written for younger readers, perhaps currently in the throws of their own young romance, there are hints of awareness about the relationship at the centre of the novel that offer an adult retrospective, viewed from an emotional distance that Min couldn't possible have.

There are three things that interested me about the book, forming the motivations for me choosing to read it. Firstly, Why We Broke Up is written as a break up letter from Min to Ed. The letter of course guides the reader through the entirety of their relationship from start to inevitable end. However, this means that it is interesting from a linguistic point of view. In terms of deictics, it is written in first person (the 'I' representing Min) to a story-internal character 'you' (Ed). It also means that the book itself is the (anti-)love letter, and the reader therefore appears to have access to this personal dialogue.

On the left, you can see the opening page. It starts with the epistolary genre salutation, 'Dear Ed'. Typographically, these words are presented as handwriting, thus in academic terms, they are considered to function through discursive import by symbolising the act of hand writing, albeit transposed into the context of a printed book. While the font subsequently returns to a conventional looking typeface, the 'Dear Ed' is presented like this in order to intimate the letter format.


Secondly, Why We Broke Up is multimodal. Each chapter opens with an illustration from artist Maira Kalman. Moreover, the pictures are not mere illustrations. They form part of the narrative world since not only does Min directly comment on them, they are also narrative artefacts, objects that trigger stories in the genesis of Min and Ed's relationship. Indeed, the letter-book itself is supposed to come in a box that Min drops off at Ed's door, together with all these objects of doomed young love. The first image (which opens the second chapter) for instance looks like this:

The image depicts the box in which the letter and associated objects are supposed to arrive. The text, too, directly references it: "The thunk is the box, Ed. This is what I am leaving you" (p.3).

The third reason I chose to read this book was the most persuasive. In marketing Why We Broke Up, the "Why We Broke Up Project" was created.

I first heard about of this through The Guardian's life style pages (see the article I first read here) but it has its own website and is promoted on the back of the novel's dust jacket. The dust jacket states, "Min and Ed's story of HEARTBREAK may remind you of your own" and instead of endorsements about the book, features testimonies by famous authors (such as Neil Gaiman, M. T. Anderson, and Brian Selznick amongst others) about their own experiences of heartache. Similarly, the website says, "That's their break up story - What's Yours?" and invites users to post their own testimonies. As a reader, you can also search the testimonies by categories: "I can't believe how disgusting you were", "I can't believe there was someone else", "I can't believe you did that", "I can't believe you wore that", "I can't believe that's what you thought", "I just can't believe it", and "I'd take you back in a minute".

As such, the book becomes part of a larger dialogue in the form of the Why We Broke Up Project. With confessions that are both funny and tragic by turns, the Why We Broke Up Project offers an intimate yet collective insight into heartbreak, and it is this that I find fascinating.

Why did YOU break up?

In Homage to Graham Rawle...

On my walk into work this morning in Leicester, I encountered a solitary playing card lying on the pavement. Of course, it reminded me instantly of Graham Rawle's forthcoming novel The Card. So I hastily took a photo, and this is my homage to him...

Rawle's The Card isn't released until June of this year, and I am already eagerly anticipating its arrival! It looks likely to be a surreal mystery in which the protagonist Riley finds a card, in a similar way to my own discovery this morning. Riley's card however spurns hidden clues and coded messages that lead him down a secret trail...

Sadly, no such enigmas surround my card, a tattered 6 of diamonds. Even a random found card that Rawle mentions on his blog appears to hold more secrets than mine (read the entry here). Oh well... Perhaps I should inscribe my own message and disgard this card on the streets of Sheffield...? Suggestions on a postcard please... or perhaps that should be, a playing card.