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poetry ribbons

The Clootie Collars are individually typed and strung or sewn with a charm – either a tiny deer or a bell.

material poems

pamphlets

Type Flight was printed in the
Michael Turner Albion Press Room at Corsham Court, on an Adana press.

Shop pamphlets

It’s four years since I made the ‘Clootie Ribbons [Rhodes edition]’, but I’ve just had an article about its ecopoetic practice as a way of marking losses during the sixth mass extinction published in Cultural Geographies. It’s part of a collection on Making Amidst Extinction guest edited by Eline Tabak and Milo Newman.

I had started out thinking about typed texts, ribbons, curating poetic fragments and ways to mark the losses of deer – through culling, RTAs, disease, habitat loss. So it was interesting and valuable to think about the work and the potential of ecopoetry in relation to place and the ongoing losses of individuals, groups, ecologies, species.

With thanks also to Astra Papachristodoulou @heyastranaut for the commission and photos from Rhodes (1 and 2), and Ethan Wilson for the image of me tying ribbons.

Link to article via bio.

Late April: and I spent more time than usual in the garden and in London, including at the Free Verse poetry book fair. Found two new-to-me publishers to get excited about: @ossa.prints and @blownrosemakes. Had many great conversations – and picked up @iriscolomb’s collection Nothing Intensifies from the wonderful @pamenarpress.

Images:
- FV haul
- entrance to Free Verse at St Columba’s
- cherry blossom in my garden
- from Blowfly by Jane Hartshorn @ossa.prints
- from Re/Percussion – the Handbook of asemic work by Chris Meade @blownrosemakes
- leafy Cadogan Square
- from Iris Colomb’s Nothing Intensifies
- blown tulip

For #worldcolourday and #worldpoetryday, here is a playful rendition of a selection of ‘colours’ from my poem ‘Sharpham in Early Summer: A set of colour cards’. This was my first poetry outing, my first performance, and what set me on the path to my MA and then PhD.

They were written at Sharpham House, Devon, during a supportive, at first nerve-wracking, and then transformative workshop with Alice Oswald and Peter Oswald in June 2014.

These poems have never been published – until this small collection! The cards here are the actual ones I made for the workshop reading. Others in the series included:

Kissing Gate
Tide
Purple Path
Maurice’s Study Green
Volcano Brown
Evening Ilex
Swallow Silver
Ceramic Washbasin Yellow
Strangled Wild Rose
Raven Gossip

PS I know that I have cut off some of the wording on Stinging Nettle – I was going to re-photograph, but it seemed appropriate, given that poem’s focus on inattention.

This is my pamphlet Canine Or / The Mesh of Metaphor, which I'm hoping to take to the @paper_ink_print festival in June @landmarkartscentre.

I first started this project back in 2020 and now have just a few decisions to make (I'd love to try a riso rather than inkjet cover, for example). The poem is an ever-expanding and entangled metaphor strand – a kind of ‘metaphor fractal’ if you like. The text appears twice – once printed on to tracing paper interleaved with hand-tracings from the image of a culture of Borrelia bergdorferi (the Lyme disease bacterium, chosen for its association with ‘deer ticks’); the second time as a broadside on the back of a poster version of a vector trace of B. bergdorferi.

I originally made the piece during my PhD @royalholloway @rhulenglish – which focused on deer in poetry, among other things.

#deer #poetry #metaphor #Lymedisease #entangled

From my ‘Tender Kittens’ project, which is a response to images produced by @graphicthoughtfacility with Lexica Aperture AI image generator and exhibited in the ‘Cute’ exhibition @somersethouse.

The poems I wrote were then fed back into Lexica, with fascinating and sometimes disturbing results (you can see some of the options it gave me to choose from with the carousel horse and costumed model).

The first five poems are published as a set of cards through my smallbirdspress.co.uk. I've now completed a full draft of the other 12 poem texts and am investigating options for publishers/sending them out into the world. I haven't yet put these new ones into Lexica – who knows what it will make of them...

#cute #kittens #ai #poetry #experimentalpoetry #artexhibition

Some Autumn.

1. My essay ‘Tender Hooks: The value of cuteness to ecopoetry’ in The Poetry Review. Big thank you to Wayne Holloway-Smith and all those who brought poets to my attention and/or are featured, inc. @calebparkinpoet @igalleymore @brihughespoet @luke.a.thompson @heyastranaut @househomepoetics

2. A deer on a plate – at the Holburne Museum, Bath, while visiting excellent Goya/Rego exhibition (great juxtapositions with the ‘airbrushed’ portraiture of the permanent collection).

3. This autumn I have been recording my ‘insect interventions’ and learned this is not a shield bug but a dock bug.

4. I did not know what to do with my old exercise books and my mother's diaries (not keep; not landfill), so I am sending them back to the earth. #composting

5. Illicit photo in the Rare Books Room at the British Library, of a detail from PJF Turpin’s conceptual plant diagram visualising Goëthe’s Urpflanze, for an essay/chapter on ‘monstrous plants’.

6. I am also looking at the cuteness (or not) of insects through macro photography. Here from ‘Why We Photograph Animals’, ed. Huw Lewis-Jones.

7. As autumn is pushed later and later, not quite the last rose in the garden.

Next Tuesday 24 Sept I am running a ‘Mindful Arts’ workshop for adult carers, this time at @orleanshousegallery in Twickenham.

Participants are first guided on a mindful walk in the woodland and grounds, ‘tuning in to your senses and the nature around us. You will then use art and creative writing techniques to chart your own experiences and what you find and share your ‘map’ of the gardens. You will leave with a selection of new ways to connect with your local green spaces.’

Bookings and more info via TicketSource (link in bio).

The images here show my own mindful roaming in a recreation ground in Bath, and the maps that I made. This spring and summer, roaming and writing helped me to revive and recuperate.

A HUGE 🥰 thank you to all of our poets/artists in Words from the Wild. Here are some behind-the-scenes photos when it was being installed on Monday. With thanks to Naomi, Peggy and Anya, the Culture team @royalholloway, and to Paradigm, the installers, and Greg Beards-Jones, the designer.

1. Redell Olsen, from Weather, Whether Radar: Plume of the Volants

2. Opening text with Astra Papachristodoulou's @heyastranaut Bee Swarm sculpture

3. My Deer Collars collage series

4. Hanging Kate Siklosi's @ksiklosi images from Leavings, next to Susan Johanknecht and Katharine Meynell’s fungus prints from Poetry of Unknown Words

5. Liz K Miller’s @liz_k_miller Forest Listening with the edge of my Clootie Ribbons on the left

6. Hannah Harding's we who collect

7. Kate Siklosi's prints up close and Astra’s Decayed behind

8. Briony Hughes’s @bristaceyhughes Sea Grammar with J. R. Carpenter's The Pleasure of the Coast behind

Open 10am to 6pm in the Davison Building at Royal Holloway, Egham, Surrey until 24 March.

Bath Spa station with the pigeons roosting up in the roof, on my way to @smallpublishers. Plus a few things I’m bringing in my box of stock - The Taro as Deer (2nd ed.), r/aww deer, Dear/Deer, plus I also have a few each of Cut-out Bambi and Deer Leg/How to Fold a Deer.

I am making a small number of copies of the linen Clootie Ribbons featured on the #smallpublishersfair2023 website - come and ask at the Poetics Research Centre table. #supportsmallpublishers

Deer/Dear is a collaboration with Cat Chong @marbledmayhem that was commissioned by @bristaceyhughes for the Runnymede International Literary Festival 2023. Cat created an incredible and moving receipt poem from a selection of my works, and I made a set of ‘7 chimera poems’ by folding together two of their works printed on origami paper poem-deers.

I'll be bringing some copies to @smallpublishersfair this weekend. Also available on the smallbirdspress.co.uk website if you won't be around Conway Hall.

#supportsmallpublishers

Getting ready for @smallpublishers this Fri/Sat, I have been binding my 64-page translation of lines from the deer-hunt scene in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. r/aww deer gives each line of the poem its own spread. The ‘antler poems’ in the centres of each section deconstruct my translation process... And the covers look pretty. (That's a French link stitch, if you are interested in those things.) Details on smallbirdspress.co.uk.

I will be bringing a few copies for sale with me at the weekend.

#supportsmallpublishers

Results from day 1 of screen printing @spikeprintstudio with Chitra Merchant. Such a fantastic introduction. Final image is from Bath station this morning - thinking of using this for colour inspiration on day 2.

Hampton Court, Crystal Palace, the Olympic pool, smell of chlorine, walking on the Thames path… These past few days have been taking me back to my childhood and teens.

For a while I used to go training at Crystal Palace pool one evening a week. Driven by my dad and other parents, a group of us from Kingston Ladies would trawl up and down the lanes. What I remember most is the height of the pool sides - dragging yourself out when exhausted to turn around and dive back in for another length within a stop-clock time.

I don’t remember the mega fauna statues from then - only the car park.

But now, swimming, deer, visual poetry, plants, the river, the parks have all become entangled.

Excited and delighted to be launching my pamphlet A Summoning Spell for Lost Deer with @osmosispress this evening @winning_gallery, 46 Bridge Road, East Molesey - over the bridge from @hamptoncourtpalace.

Huge thanks to @susiecampbellwrites and @k_ren_sandhu who will be reading with me from 7pm (refreshments from 6.30). Also the fantastic @marbledmayhem - all three have stepped in (due to illness) to make for what I hope will be a wonderful evening - I always love hearing from these poets. 💚💚💚

Thanks and love to @bristaceyhughes and @heyastranaut who are my co-exhibitors and organisers of our Textual Porosity group show xx

Love these photos that @heyastranaut and I took of each other with some of our works @winning_gallery in our exhibition with @bristaceyhughes.

We are open till 6pm today and then every day 10-6 until next Sunday 11 June. We have met so many interesting and interested people around Hampton Court village, made connections, found new art and artists. Inspiring for us to be here 💚🦌🐝🌊💚

Come on in! A few little peeks inside our Textual Porosity exhibition @winning_gallery, open daily 10-6 until 11 June.

Spent yesterday putting for all up with @heyastranaut @bristaceyhughes and friends and family.

It’s a lovely sunny day at Hampton Court and we are just over the bridge by all the cafes. 💚🦌🌸🐝🌊💚

A few of the things I’ve been making this week in preparation for Textual Porosity @winning_gallery with @heyastranaut and @bristaceyhughes. Nearly there for opening on Tuesday and launch event Fri 2 June!

1. Herd - series of deers folded from pages of the FT and Sunday Times (they now stand up, thanks to bonding with lining paper!). 2. Some of the cut-out deers from Cut-out Bambi for a special order. 3. Box and shredded tissue swaddling for Deer / Dear, my collaboration with @marbledmayhem. 4. Making Cut-out Bambi as a series of file cards for display. 5. Ironed ribbons for typing Clootie Collars.

And that’s not all! Lots more will be on show at the gallery and in the @poem.atlas catalogue.

Textual Porosity is the exciting group show I am part of, along with the wonderful visual poets @heyastranaut and @bristaceyhughes. Come along 30 May to 11 June to the lovely @winning_gallery near Hampton Court, Surrey to see the poem-deers and many other works up close. (And you should see the gorgeous catalogue that Astra is designing! 😍) See linktree in bio for more details. 🌿 🐝 🌊 🦌

Trying some larger paper deers for a special event coming soon. Turns out the pink pages of the FT don’t properly support deerkind.

Final image is for scale. This one is around 55cm high. I’m trying to reach 90cm!

#deer #origami #anticapitalistdeer #paper

Some images and thank-yous from my trip to London earlier this week. Lovely to see Robert Hampson and @bristaceyhughes for lunch (thank you Robert!) and talk about #RFest2024.

Discussing/looking at books, poetry, artist's books, #poeticsresearchcentre at the wonderful @bookartbookshop (can't believe it was my first visit) and @nationalpoetrylibrary. Many thanks to Chiara and Will for your interest in my work and for being so welcoming.

Images:
1. From ‘The Camden Hoard’ – a project that has fascinated me ever since I first heard about it, and now I have seen the exhibition and have the book! Curated by @nataliazagorskathomas
2. Stevie Smith's collars in the ‘Poets in Vogue’ exhibition
3. My pamphlet Deer Leg/How to Fold a Deer – now available in the Bookartbookshop and NPL
4. Yellowjackets poster – with antlers
5. SCRUB Management Handbook No.1 Mere (Singing Apple Press, editor @nelsoncamilla) – now also in Bookartbookshop and NPL
6. My own hoard from @bookartbookshop
7. Mirror binding of Cut-out Bambi
8. ‘Iron curtain’ from ‘The Camden Hoard’

I can make typed poetry again! My 1947 Imperial needs more expertise than I have to repair it, so I have invested in a professionally checked 1962 Olivetti Lettera 22.

It’s a design classic – and portable. So it will be accompanying me to a very special event at the end of May. Exciting announcement coming shortly!

#poetry #typewriter #olivetti #lettera #typewriterpoetry #experimentalpoetry #ribbon #poetrycommunity

It's the final poem from my 22-card series The Taro as Deer: Major Arcana for this #ataroaday series. XXI. the world.

Thank you to everyone who has been checking in. More images and info on my Small Birds Press website: linktree in bio.

the Passenger took a leaf

aligning it with a fragment of rice paper taped to the typewriter platen striking the keys with tip-tap strokes making dents through green into white placing leaf-written letters into words

words into lines and lines into a poem that the Passenger would take into the woods attaching it to a tree so that Doe would come and eat the poem and make it a part of them

#poetry #deer #leaf #typewriter #typewriterpoetry #experimentalpoetry #tarot #poetrycommunity

#ataroaday XX. judgement.

Doe and the Passenger
took off their skins
and swam together
in the lido

#poetry #tarot #experimentalpoetry #vispo #deer #halftone #poetrycommunity

I have been meaning to share extracts from the gorgeous ‘DEER rain’ scroll by Cat Chong @marbledmayhem ever since the @paper_ink_print festival where Cat first showed it to me.

The piece is collaged from a selection of poems I have composed (and snippets of a song lyric – see below) and was part of a collaboration commissioned by @bristaceyhughes for the Runnymede Literary Festival organised by Robert Hampson. My part of our collaboration is the origami paper poem-deers, through which I ‘folded’ ‘7 chimera poems for cat chong’, combining two of their texts.

One of the pieces Cat re-cast lines from is ‘A Summoning Spell for Lost Deer’. This is itself a collage poem, so I have included among the images here the list of names of poets and translators whose phrases are the roots and raw material of that poem.

The other work Cat has drawn from is the Bauhaus song lyric for ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’, which was a formative influence in my teens! (I would have been a goth, I guess, but could never quite master the make-up.)

#poetry #deer #rain #bauhaus #scroll #poetrycommunity #collaboration #rfest #smallpublishers

The final three cards of #ataroaday begin with XIX. the sun.

an exploding
point of intense
unlookability

#poetry #tarot #deer #experimentalpoetry #vispo #poetrycommunity #halftone

It hasn't quite been #ataroaday recently, with the Runnymede Literary Festival and @paper_ink_print – but here is XVIII. the moon for today.

midnight on the train / tracks

plants seen from / underside

the Passenger / and Doe
circle / each other

which is / real ?

The #poeticsresearchcentre table with #corruptedpoetry at @paper_ink_print in the @landmarkartscentre

Some of my works including #cutoutbambi #taroasdeer #SCRUB #deerleg from #smallbirdspress and Singing Apple Press plus @bristaceyhughes @osmosispress @hashimotocaro @k_ren_sandhu @guillemotpress #crestedtitcollective @marbledmayhem @ep.jenkins.poetry @jdhowse #robinboothroyd with #pertinentactions anthology co-edited by Robert Hampson and #livingwithotherpeople in background (sorry if I have missed anyone!)

All on our table through Sunday with readings in the Bell Room from 1.30pm

#ataroaday XVII. the star. For today's online Runnymede Literary Festival #RFest readings.

Not too late to book on Eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/runnymede-literary-festival-2023-tickets-570643418827

Doe stepped
out of the ocean
out of the ground
out of the sky

#poetry #poetryreadings #star #deer #ocean #poetrycommunity #poeticsresearch

In between setting up @landmarkartscentre @paper_ink_print I managed to get a walk in Bushy Park. (Scroll for real deers among the bracken.)

Thanks to @bristaceyhughes @marbledmayhem @heyastranaut @danisalvadori @omyhangu @moripaperstudio

#ataroaday XVI. the tower. Oh no! Not really the poem card I would have wanted, sitting on the coach to London for @paper_ink_print! (Or maybe it was predicting the rail strike.)

the Passenger observed

as their carriage
spiralled
and
shattered

Doe tiptoed
among
the broken

#poetry #deer #passenger #printfair #smallpublishers #railstrike

I've been making some more copies of the two-part pamphlet Deer Leg/How to Fold a Deer – which is a limited edition of 16. See link to #smallbirdspress in bio.

Both pamphlets can be folded and unfolded in many different ways. It's up to you.

This latest batch will be coming with me to @paper_ink_print @landmarkartscentre for the #poeticsresearchcentre table on Friday.

#poetry #deer #paper #maggieosullivan #fold #zerkall #spreadsheet

#ataroaday XV. the devil.

Doe watched
theirself on YouTube
counting the likes

#poetry #tarot #deer #halftone #poetrycommunity

#ataroaday. XIV. temperance.

Doe holds
fire and flood
balancing
them on one hoof

#poetry #deer #taro #poetictarot #experimentalpoetry #poetrycommunity #halftone

Busy today making a couple of copies of #cutoutbambi to bring to @paper_ink_print. They are fiddly and time-intensive little pamphlets to put together, so are usually only available made-to-order via my #smallbirdspress shop (smallbirdspress.co.uk).

Each fawn, doe, stag is cut out by hand with a 15A scalpel. Which means I have ended up with a growing collection of cut-out deers. I have kept every one (except for a few lost) since I began making prototypes. One day I'll decide what to do with them.

From Friday 17 to Sunday 19 March, the pamphlets will be on table 20 with the #poeticsresearchcentre and #corruptedpoetry @landmarkartscentre @landmarkartfairs in Teddington.

#deer #poetry #bambi #disney #experimentalpoetry #artistbook #mirror #silhouette #erasure

#atraroaday XIII. death. I wrote this poem writing about the medieval deer hunt for my PhD and thinking about the war in Ukraine and climate emergency.

Doe was fleeing
dogs
swords
arrows
rifles
fallout
fires
knives
floodwaters
wolves
beaters
snares
SUVs
HGVs
bovine tuberculosis
ballistic missiles

Revisiting some past projects that I'll be bringing to @paper_ink_print next weekend. This is the artist’s book version of #SCRUB Management Handbook No.1 Mere. (I only have one left, but there are more available via @nelsoncamilla.)

Each bookwork consists of a 16-page pamphlet and unique cyanotype print made in and with the ‘overgrown’ plants of the Singing Apple Press garden, a list of the species I could spot (and name!) and seeds gathered there. Held by a letterpress-printed ‘belly band’.

It was my first residency, my first published pamphlet, and I loved doing the whole project.

See link in bio for #smallbirdspress.

#poetry #scrub #plants #singingapplepress #letterpress #cyanoptype #experimentalpoetry #experimentalphotography #poetrycommunity

#ataroaday XII. the hanged man. This is one of the tarot poems that appears in the new anthology #livingwithotherpeople from Corrupted Poetry, which launches Tuesday 21 March @chenerbooks.

Poets featured will also be reading on Sunday 19 March @paper_ink_print in Teddington, along with our Poetics Research Centre line-up. See https://www.landmarkartscentre.org/paper-ink-print-festival-2023/

when Doe was a kid

they used to enjoy

hanging

upside
down

on the swings

[the Passenger gripped

on to the blood-scented chain]

#poetry #tarot #deer #poetrycommunity

#ataroaday XI. strength. Day 12 of this series from my poetic deck, The Taro as Deer, published through #smallbirdspress.

Doe stuck out
their tongue and
—ROARED

like a lion

#poetry #tarot #smallpublishers #deer #paperinkprint

#ataroaday X. wheel of fortune.

on certain summer evenings when the light planed over basking grass
Doe would stand by the hornbeam hedge watching as

the Passenger careered past at break-neck speed

tripping through books to a place
that might be home
[sometimes the Passenger saw Doe]

#poetry #deer #tarot #poetrycommunity #smallpublishers

#ataroaday IX. the hermit.

the Passenger was translating
the legend
of the Deer
in Flowers

#poetry #deer #tarot #poetrycommunity

Monday deers, Tuesday deers... I am folding two deers a day for my collaboration with @marbledmayhem (or that’s the plan!).

I will be reading from them at the Runnymede Literary Festival on Saturday 18 March, and reading and displaying @paper_ink_print Festival on Sunday 19 March in Teddington, where the #PoeticsResearchCentre has a table from Friday (4-8pm) to Sunday (weekend 10am to 4.30pm), along with #CorruptedPoetry. See linktree in bio to register and for details.

#RFest #poetry #deer #pertinentactions #livingwithotherpeople #poetrycommunity

#ataroaday card number VIII. justice.

the Passenger balked
at the storm-split trunk
barring their path

—pondering
pounding—

a life divided

#poetry #antlers #deer #tarot #experimentalpoetry #poetrycommunity

VII. the chariot is today’s #taroaday. I first started writing these poems after habitually spotting deers from train windows on my way to London and Exeter. The deers started entering my dreams.

[Passenger POV]

my river is
the yellow line
edging
the platform

my trees are
signal posts
pylons

my path is
the rails
cutting through

The deer herd is growing - slowly. 7 deers printed. 2 deers folded. 1 text transcribed. 1 poem drafted. #chimerapoems for @marbledmayhem.

For #RFest and @paper_ink_print commissioned by @bristaceyhughes.

#ataroaday For Saturday evening we have number VI. the lovers:

Doe’s circle expands

to bee and birch

to wagtail and waterlily
to rocks in their multitudes

to oyster and its catchers
to mycelium and muntjac

even to

the Passenger

#poetry #deer #taxidermy #tarot #poetrycommunity

As a pause between deer and tarot, this is where I was two weeks ago. With amazing oak tree bark formations. Curling into stylised oak-leaf shapes.

How many feet does Doe have? I am never quite sure. #ataroaday

V. the hierophant

Doe fastens

the braids

of the antler headpiece
around their skull

a drum

a step

> >

> > > >

> >

> >

fly !

#poetry #tarot #deer #poetrycommunity #experimentalpoetry

You would not believe how many times I have messed up this relatively simple print job by not Paying Attention to One Thing at a Time.

Still, all the mishaps get recycled into #smallbirdspress cards and compliment slips, and possibly bookmarks for @paper_ink_print fair.

#poetry #deer #thetaroasdeer #tarot #smallpublishers

#ataroaday Day 5: IV. the emperor from my poetic tarot deck The Taro as Deer (with reference to Ithell Colqhoun’s The Taro as Colour).

the sun pulled
Doe’s shadow
and the Passenger’s shadow

into an A-frame

#poetry #tarot #deer #poetrycommunity #experimentalpoetry #cards #smallpublishers

Gorgeous Moriki papers for my collaboration with @marbledmayhem for @bristaceyhughes and the Runnymede Lit Fest.

They come from the wonderful Minerva Art Shop in #Bath.

#poetry #poetrycommunity #deer #origami #artshop

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more about the press

Small Birds Press publishes works by Caroline Harris and collaborations with other poets (and AI). It regularly appears at book fairs, including the Small Publishers Fair at Conway Hall, London. For queries, or to commission work, please email smallbirdspress@gmail.com.

‘Thinking through text, texture, and (often) textile, Small Birds Press offers a radical and crucial intervention into how we negotiate the materials of the book and the material of language itself.’

BRIONY HUGHES

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