Fathoms & Fairs
A love poem for you, plus dates of book fairs where you can find more of my work
As yesterday was Valentine’s, I thought I’d share a love poem with you called ‘Fathoms’. It’s a poem I wrote about the beginning of a relationship, but, as is the grace of poetry, it will accept whatever meaning you bring to it, and will give you whatever meaning you find.
I wrote it as part of an ongoing collaboration with artist Lee Shearman for Micro Library Books – Lee’s small-press publishing platform specialising in pocket-sized, limited-edition artists’ books, all designed and made by hand by Lee, featuring his own abstract illustrations plus titles made collaboratively with other artists and writers.
Together, Lee and I exhibit and sell the books at art book fairs around the UK and internationally. This year, you can find us at Bristol Artists' Book Event (BABE), Free Verse Poetry Book and Magazine Fair in London, Winchester School of Art Artists’ Book and Zine Fair, and Bergen Art Book Fair in Norway. I’ve put the dates and websites at the end of this post. Do come along to any or all! It would be lovely to see you there, and they’re always such brilliant events.
Our Micro Library Books are somewhere between art objects, tiny coffee table books, and zines and are usually in a concertina-folded format that invites interaction. One time at a book fair, a woman looking for a stocking filler for her grandkid asked me if the books ‘did’ anything, and – as well as making the case that they were sure to bring her a smile, warm her heart, make her gasp in wonder – I did concede that they’d probably function pretty well as a slinky down some smallish steps.
I took a picture of Fathoms today (shown below) in its Micro Library Books form – the first edition published in 2017, and for some reason, I thought my stubbiest pencil would give a sense of scale; in case not, the books are around about matchbox size. The form was inspired by Lee exploring what was possible with a single sheet of A4 paper.
To create the poetry books, we work together as artist and writer in tandem – with the imagery informing the words, the words informing the images. Often, as with this poem, what we make is a sort of augmented collage inspired by found material or old technical manuals. For Fathoms, we wove together patterns, terms and marks from a 1970s publication by the UK Hydrographic Department called Symbols and Abbreviations used on Admiralty Charts. Our collection of these types of manuals in our studio is ever-growing; current favourites waiting to be explored are an old copy of Which? magazine (also from the 70s), the Hornby Railways Track Plans 5th Edition, and a student textbook called a handbook of dairy foods (with this wonderfully all-lowercase title).
I’m not sure that now leaves really the right note to lead into the poem, but here we go. … Actually no, I’ll give you a nice fathomy fact first, that’ll be better.
Fathom: a unit of length equal to six feet, in reference to the depth of water. From the Old English ‘fæthm’, the original sense was ‘something that embraces’; hence the measurement is based on the span of the outstretched arms from fingertip to fingertip.
Fathoms
Your outstretched arms: a coast imperfectly known, a shoreline unsurveyed. I try to reach you. (Caution) a warning a cliffy coast a danger line, a bluff. Foreshore, sand and mud. Snags and submerged stumps. In the water the arm of the sea, throws out wrecks, unknown depths – rocks that cover and uncover in an attempt to deep-six mine. I dive – a sounding line – and surface a fathom from you: already the measure of my world.
Book fairs where you can find more of my poetry, 2024
Into The Fold, Winchester School of Art – Artists Book & Zine Fair 15 & 16 March 2024 Winchester School of Art, Westside Building, SO23 8DJ, UK eventbrite.co.uk/e/into-the-fold-2024-tickets-713190109817 Bergen Art Book Fair 12, 13, 14 April 2024 Bergen Kunsthall, Rasmus Meyers allé 5, 5015 Bergen, Norway babf.no/ Free Verse Poetry Book and Magazine Fair 20 April 2024 St Columba's, Pont Street, London, SW1X 0BD, UK poetrybookfair.com Bristol Artists Book Event (BABE) 29 & 30 June 2024 University of the West of England, Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Bristol BS3 2JT, UK cfpr.uwe.ac.uk/save-the-date-babe-2024/