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1991 'Firedogs'A review by Cathy Courtney |
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Firedogs'Fire Dogs' is a rich, dark, bloody book, full of threat and doom and yet intimat- ing redemption by virtue of its own coherence and integrity. As before, Cam-pbell entwines violence and sensitivity not only in his subject matter but in the treatment of the materials (sandpaper included) which have been dragooned into the use in the printing process; that there are seven artist's proofs is partly due to the force which Campbell applied whilst the book was on the press, causing several sheets of paper to crack at the edges. Ironically, one of the quieter images - black shapes like nascent tadpoles swimming against a rose background - was achieved by directing a drill to bore and skid across the surface of the metal printing blocks. The image which punctuates the poem in the 'abstract' version was produced by turning bits of type onto their sides and printing from the surface usually never seen and, as well as introducing different tones which fade and grow strong across the page, the formation was altered as bits flew off the stubs of type crushed beneath the weight of the machinery. Part of the thinking behind ' Firedogs' was to create disorganisation out of the very elements usually used in an orderly fashion to construct a book, subverting the clean, careful processes into a controlled explosion. Campbell was also anxious to use 'waste' mat- erials - the letter-heads of the bits of type were exhausted and would have been melted down had he not used them in this way - and the seriousness and irrevocability of the crime which robs form of its natural life, leaving it broken and tortured, is a theme which haunts the book's language both literal and visual. In the 'abstract' the lead type arrangement is precise and clean, giving breath- ing space and status against the plain paper backdrop, but in the main book it plays a supporting role and is rarely seen in isolation, sat against the metallic slabs which Campbell uses to determine the ideal proportion for his pages, usually acting as a screen behind which the other colours or text lie. In the same way, the sequence of poems in the 'abstract' are set against empty places for peaceful contemplation but have to pinch their way forward amid the thumping drama of the main book. The tension between the work's harsh and gentle forces begins early on. The cover of the 'abstract' is made up of tightly regimented, claustrophobic black sections such as Campbell has used in the past, but the title appears in large, romantic lettering, taken from woodblocks which have a gothic echo, and the first inner pages are an unexpected shade of apricot leading the eye and touch towards the fine off-white paper which makes up the rest of the book. The 'abstract' contains variations on the lead-type image plus Cam- pbell's war-like lament, full of warning and shock, whilst the main book adds to these, among other layers of word and image, Biblical quotations and the three admonitions of Jove. The first jolt of the main volume is finding the seductive pinks and reds which enrich the cover, discovered nestling like soft flesh beneath armour, as the book slips out from a hard box which sports blacks, golds, nail-heads and what look like metal plates, and this vulnerabil- ity is picked out again in the text with words like 'belly' recurring several times amid the tales of destruction. The first and last images are of a dark rain of tears, in fact formed from overprinting a constellation of nail-heads as many as a dozen times, but the intervening journey takes place on concentrated blocks of colour which remain distinct and abut one another with equal vehemence, like bulls locked in paralysed combat. Before anything else, Fire Dogs is a gorgeous feast for the eyes, luxuriating in a limited palette of rich and glossy colours veering from warmth tot chill, and on turning from the end of the book to begin again one is suddenly alert to having been led unawares far from the starting point, hypnotised by the density of the material. Campbell's muscular language powers one through the book, the impact all the greater for amalgamating the violent story with the printing process itself so that the distillation of the personal concerns of the artist, both professional and political: 'Red the stain on belly wool Colour and texture play a large role in the writing, throwing the reader back against the gleaming surfaces which surround it at the same time as the narrative takes its place in the mind's eye, and the opening poem, which sets the mood by reporting the vicious murder of a valley of trees, evokes their hacking down as vividly as accounts of the carnage and ensuing silence on the battlefields of the First World War. Later shapes and words recall overkill of the kind witnessed in the Gulf but even here there is the binding together of the vast and ruthless with the small and fragile: 'Listen to the shells, The double association of the word 'shell', its innocent connotation corrupted by its link with modern warfare, is one of the ways in which Campbell man- ages to telescope history, and the text is as redolent with traces of our fore- bears as it is with grief and rage at contemporary stupidity, perhaps one of the reasons why the sense of sin is so pervasive. Listening is required through- out the book, both to the rhythm of the language itself and also to the sounds evoked by the imagined scenes. Certain words - for example, 'artillery' - are worked into the blocks of colour outside the areas designated for the formal text and the eye must search these out as if exploring the subcon-scious. References to fire and water find partners in the furnace colours and in the blue-green layers which create an effect of depth, and the assurance of most of the verse allows Campbell to change moods several time within a short distance of a very few lines: 'that dead blue sea-shield; Campbell, unlike many artists making books, dares to take full responsibility for both text and image and to allow them equal status, in this case success- fully binding them together in a consolidation of process and meaning to create a concentrated, original roar for peace. Cathy Courtney |