Poetry is always recycling itself: it’s a kind of permanent landfill. Landfill, mindfill, handsfull, sound-swill.
Or to put it another way, it’s language that continually recycles itself: the soundtrack to our lives, popping up here and there, changing and churning, biodegrading, upgrading, forming a sludge the size of a continent somewhere in the middle of our collective unconcious.
If we have a collective unconscious. But then, that term’s just part of the sludge.
It’s an amazing thing, language. At least it amazes me. But it would, wouldn’t it? I’m one of the arch-perpetrators of making the sludge temporarily concrete, printing it onto a substance made from trees and packing it into little cellophane bags.
Rachel commented last week that she wondered why I bothered with the little bags. It’s because I think of the poetry pamphlets as valuable. The little bags protect the corners. The words keep beautifully inside those bags. If you buy a rare pamphlet publication — the kind that costs a hundred quid or so ((I have done this), they tend to come packed this way. So although pamphlets are ephemeral, I suppose I treat them like they’re not. I’m going to stop using the self-seal kind though.
And I like to work with local printers and feel that I am, in a tiny way, part of the local economy. Liz and Robert at the Dolphin Press in Glenrothes don’t do books. They do pamphlets, raffle tickets, flyers. They use machines they’ve had for a long time and skills they’ve had for longer. They talk to me and they have two beautiful dogs. I can pick up the publications on my way to collect my LovedOne from his workplace, so this feels sensible and sustainable to me.
Actually I rather like all the coloured bins, though I’m trying to put less in them. And Matt and I nearly had a row in Morrisons last week when I refused to buy the carrots in pre-packed bags and insisted on putting them in the trolley loose. All this fuss about one stupid bag! he ranted. But I make even more fuss about one stupid comma. Off to do more of that right now, in fact.
Interesting to read the thoughts behind the practice!
I did use a more local printer for my first postcards but then they changed all their machinery (damned digital – cards looked horrible!) and that’s when I looked further afield (well, a bit north) and found the green printing specialist I’ve used since.
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