Strange Books
This blog post is part of a publication for Amplified Publishing Bristol + Bath Creative R+D. For the full publication, WhatsApp the words ‘strange books’ to +447380333721.
Even back when No Bindings was a playful, personal project, I was thinking about the ways in which pamphlets, letters and books are given more details, more life, or simply made louder by other mediums.
One thing I focused on was “books made aloud”:
Author readings
Poetry performance
Storytime
In these ways, books are made loud by the voice of the author, the poet, the storyteller.
With printing being relatively costly, digitising these readings, performances and stories has been one way I have looked to add detail and volume to the books for audiences to enjoy.
But I, as the publisher, often see so much more than the end products. I see:
the movement of hands cutting and foldings over and over until a neat stack of 50 booklets lie ready to be pressed
the scribbles in sketchbooks and waste lino from relief prints made rich with ink.
And in the cases of books made with community art groups and organisations, I see the poetry workshops and writing sessions that gently nurtured poems and prose from folks who have said “I can’t write” “I don’t know how”.
To me, it’s sometimes this network of people that truly says “amplified publishing”. The book is actually part of a constellation of contributors and concepts and places and time spent and connections made. And when we bring folks into the publishing experience for the first time, it is publishing itself, be that the processes or the industry, that is acted upon, innovated, amplified.
As I challenge myself to produce, promote and distribute No Bindings’ most “normal” book to date, I come back again and again to thinking about publishing as an art form; a tool for gathering ideas and artists together into a cultural object.
Perhaps the tension will forever be between:
The fact this book was made is important enough.
If that book isn’t read, does all that hard work mean nothing?