AbaB

1984; edition of 50
13.5 x 9.25 in, 343 x 235 mm

Formed from I7 joined sheets: 68 concertina-folded pages as one long strip, pasted onto heavy endboards of varnished wood, in a slipcase. Silkscreened by Jim Birnie at Norwich School of Art on Heritage Rag acid-free paper.

I wrote and artworked the book in three parallel and overlapping lines that run its length disregarding the concertina folds. The centre line records a conversation that took place between 'A' and 'B'. It stands as a proposition for a piece of sculpture, and also floats whisky on 'an ocean made of paper'. The other two lines help or hinder the progress of this notion: all three lines are in expanded or condensed woodletter forms deployed to assist this book's stammering progress from left to right.

I had two cases of wood letter, of different printing heights: one Anglo- American, an extra fatfaced serif, and the other Didot, a Continental sans serif, very condensed and beautiful.They were so different in their respective fatness and thinness that they represented the polar ends of type design. As an act of cussedness I thought to do a book that brings the two together and see what happens. A formal problem to run ragged the poetry to come. Then I thought of an ocean made of paper; 'think of an ocean, think of a notion'. The text followed a conversation between 'A' (me) and 'B' (Bruce Brown, in brown). We were discussing Borges convolutions. We began thus: A: 'think of a sea.' B: 'You mean the letter?' A: 'No an ocean made of paper . . .' The conversation continued and I wrote it down. This was the first time I had generated text for a specific book. Up to that point the books had been slim volumes of verse attempting to break out of that mould.