Joakim Norling : The Making of Judith

 

 

In early 2019 Amanda Earl approached me to ask if I would be interested in publishing an anthology of women making visual poetry, edited by her. It was a project which she had been thinking about for some time but not approached a publisher about. I had published Amanda’s ‘Revelation’ a couple of months before and she was pleased with the design choices I had made. At the time Timglaset Editions had been publishing chapbooks, artists’ books and quirky little objects for a little more than two years. Timglaset’s first perfect bound book was still a couple of weeks into the future and the thought of publishing an anthology with multiple contributors and maybe a hundred pages or more seemed daunting. Of course I accepted.

That was the start of the most exciting and exhausting project I have been involved in as a publisher. I had very vague ideas of what a publishing project of this magnitude might entail. As a publisher I was aware that about 90% of the submissions I got were from male poets and artists but could see for myself that there were many women regularly posting work on social media who never submitted their work for publication. I was also aware that women were strangely absent from the history of concrete and visual poetry. Amanda’s proposed anthology wanted to address the erasure of women from the history and present of visual poetry and I could see that there was a real need.

Between us we could easily think of about a hundred names that might be considered for inclusion in the anthology but none of us was very satisfied with that and we embarked on a journey of discovery which at the time of writing has resulted in a list of 1179 living women who make, or at some point in their careers as writers and artists, have made visual poetry. Getting to know the work of hundreds of very diverse, but brilliant and inventive, women has been one of the great joys of this project, which at some point was named in honour of one of its oldest participants, Canada’s Judith Copithorne, who started making visual poetry in the 60s and continues to do so today.

When we set out I could more or less intellectually fathom that an anthology involving multiple contributors would also mean that the amount of problems and decisions would multiply. But I wasn’t prepared for the scale of it. Luckily Amanda has turned out to be an editor of unearthly patience and perseverance, quietly documenting everything in spreadsheets, steadily pushing ahead when I have been secretly despairing. Over time “probably a hundred pages or more” has evolved into a 260-pages anthology with more than 160 images, contributions from 36 artists and authors from 21 countries. And add to that three essays, a round table interview and a foreword by Johanna Drucker. That scale of ambition was certainly not in my mind when we started out. The dreaded phrase “wouldn’t it be nice if…” got a positive ring to it, for the simple reason that most of the ideas Amanda brought to the table made the project stronger and made sense to me in relation to the mission we had set ourselves.

At the moment I’m designing the last few pages -- acknowledgements, colophon, table of contents. In a matter of just a few weeks ‘Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry’ will be sent to print. Both Amanda and I have spent hundreds of unpaid hours making this book but thanks to overwhelming support for our crowdfunding campaign it will be printed and distributed without financial risk to me, the publisher. For this and for being taken on this incredible journey I’m eternally grateful. And I suspect it isn’t quite over yet.

By the way, does anyone out there enjoy packing hundreds of books? Please get in touch!

 

The crowdfunding campaign for Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry is live until April 21 at https://igg.me/at/judith/

 

 

Timglaset Editions is a publisher of visual poetries and other forms of expression which blur the boundaries between literature and visual arts. Since 2016 we have published more than 50 chapbooks, full collections, posters and objects. Timglaset is based in Malmö, Sweden but has an international audience.

Joakim Norling is a 50-something university drop-out who has a dayjob in editing. After spending many years writing about music he got sick of his own words and discovered concrete poetry. Since then he has spent most of his spare hours editing, publishing, packing and sending Timglaset books.

natalie hanna : joe blades' tinted glasses, small press fair, c. 1995

 

 

 

forgive me, the first time we met
the unsteady glass of me
filled with mistrust
thought the coolest name in small press
might be invention, might cut up
weak verse for breakfast

thought i was getting used to surprise
announcements the scourge
was claiming acquaintances
while we cloistered in our 2020 homes

i wonder if, five days hence
the friendly air
of barely controlled panic
in my therapist's face
will overcome my own and
which of us will be more relieved
to cancel 

sous le dôme blanc épais
of the plaster glebe centre heaven
surveying our ephemeral efforts
you sat at a table in faded denim jacket
long hair about your leaning elbows
behind those overly large
tea tinted glasses
through which you drank the room
lightly 

the blanket backdrop my therapist hangs
in her basement for virtual sessions
slips and i see my own scatter, ill-fitting
underneath the neutral colours

is it more merciful
if out of sight, meant wiped from mind forever

i was in the middle of asking after cake
when i heard, two days late
that you were mysteriously gone
made ash at lighning speed —
are those cherries maraschino or glace
i continued, as if they were life itself
and i had to know how much
bright, red stain to contend with

 

 

 

 

natalie hanna is a queer, Ottawa- born lawyer of Middle-Eastern descent, living with disabilities and working with low income populations. Her writing focuses on intersectional feminism, political, ecological, and personal themes, including racism, violence, identity, and disability. She runs battleaxe press, a small poetry press, encouraging work from a feminist perspective. From April of 2016 to September of 2018, she served as the Administrative Director of the Sawdust Reading Series, and on the board of Arc Poetry Magazine.  She is the author of eleven chapbooks of poetry, including three titles with above/ground press. Her most recent chapbook, infinite redress with Baseline Press was published in the Fall of 2020. A twelfth, collaborative chapbook is forthcoming in the Spring of 2021 with Collusion Books. Her poetry, interviews, and commentary have appeared in print and online in Canada and the United States. Her poem, “light conversation” received Honourable Mention in ARC Magazine’s 2019 Diana Brebner Prize. More information about her literary work can be found online at: https://nhannawriting.wordpress.com.

Ellen Chang-Richardson : rorscharch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet of Taiwanese and Cambodian-Chinese descent who currently lives/works on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. The author of three poetry chapbooks including snap, pop, performance (Gap Riot Press), her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, Room, Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, and Parentheses, among others. She is the co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series, the founder of Little Birds Poetry, and a member of the poetry collective VII. https://ehjchang.com