Feeling a bit nostalgic today – throwback to just before the Caper Press launched.
Not quite Christmas yet, but the Caper Press launch is now just four days away. I know it must be real because Alexandra, Drew and I had an actual meeting about it last week where we three looked each other in the eye(s) and and very solemnly repeated that it is all going to be fine. Which of course, it is. And you know, a bit of nervousness is a good thing, to quote Mr Carr, it shows we care.
And we do care. I spent yesterday carefully lino-printing logos onto canvas bags. This was a slightly labour intensive way of going about things its true. I don’t think it is very expensive to get them printed commercially, but, well, it felt like something I wanted to do. (Thanks need to be given to Lucy Carruthers for her company, expert critique and instruction-reading).
So pleased with this great review of Workhouse to Westminster on Open Democracy, and reproduced on Radio Free. And we hear there’s another in this month’s copy of the The House magazine. We are impatiently awaiting our copy…
My longstanding project to self-publish a collection of my poems rumbles on. Progress has been made, in the form of buying ISBN numbers. And since you can only buy them ten at a time, I thought why not aim higher than only publishing my poems.
I stared at the register in consternation. Can this be? Seriously? That someone has the same — the very same! — signature as me. (Save for her flourish over the ‘i’ to my squiggle through the ‘t’.) It’s uncanny. Three months on and I’m off to meet her at the railway station. Hmmm. I wonder: should I have taken a precaution, and hidden my banking information?
I see her
being stung by the bumble bee
on the windowsill she
was told not to play with.
Then chicken pox, being sick.
Drinking warm water to fix her tummy –
really mummy?
Shutting the door to her room
to keep the monsters out.
Waking up in the night to find
her parents not about
and the lady next door there instead.
That little boy at nursery
slapping play-dough
over one eye: I’m a pirate!
Scrambling over the wall towards
the field at the bottom of the garden.
In her red shorts, J’ai pas d’culotte
Led back into the house,
getting dressed not quite mastered yet.
The swings at bluebell time:
a neighbour with long curly hair
and armfuls full of them. Was it legal then?
Louise and her red wellies.
Being allowed in the tractor.
Winnie the Pooh on the radio, sat
at the table near the window
site of that bee attack.
Mousey the pony trotting off
with a shrieking cousin on his back.
First school day, at lunch,
assigned to an older girl: Would you like seconds?
I remember
my confused look at the clock.
Barboured and booted against another wet day,
chatty and helpful he led us away.
He pointed to a landmark we’d already seen
on a part of the walk where we’d only just been.
A mile or so darker our footsteps (re)traced
the consequences of good sense, sadly misplaced.
All because we couldn’t quite make ourselves say
how we weren’t quite sure this was quite the right way.
Do you have a passion for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? Since starting at the Story Museum in Oxford (where I work as the Museum’s Content Shepherdess) I’ve noticed that some of my most creative friends do. I’m starting to wonder if there is a connection…
Alice was never one of my favourites – I blame the Disney illustrations of Alice as a blonde, I just never identified as a child (I was much more into Matilda or, funnily enough, the BFG’s Sophie). Maybe that is why I didn’t grow up to be a designer, unlike Philip, Lucy, Eun… Or maybe it was because I was never meant to be a designer that I didn’t like the book? Hmmm. Not a very scientific investigation so far; any further comments on this most welcome.
I have also been learning many wonderlandish things about the book and its author – Lewis Carroll – including his real name, ‘day job’ and hobbies; that the book pokes fun at the rigid Victorian education system and that the Hatter is never called the Mad Hatter in the book, only his tea party is. And come to think of it, the tea party isn’t his at all, but happens outside the March Hare’s house.
Alice is apparently one of the most translated texts in the world. From Oxford to Korea and Brazil, the story has travelled a long way in its 150 years – perhaps no surprise then if a fair bit has been lost in translation along the way.
In celebration of the anniversary of the first telling of Alice’s adventures – by a certain Charles Dodgeson to one Alice Liddell – and of its many interpretations since, the Story Museum is hosting a touring exhibition of illustrations of Alice that features artists from all over the world. Barely a blonde Alice in sight.
The Museum has developed two supporting ‘activity rooms’ where visitors can enjoy the story and experience our interpretation of the Hatter’s tea party. I was lucky enough to be involved in commissioning and planning the activity rooms. And so am extra pleased to share a couple of photos here, as well as a picture of the main exhibition.
The Caper Press 