Monday 4 July 2022

Larkin - marginalised- marginalia / print

 


Someone donated two boxes of books to the shop yesterday. Naturally, the anticipation level rises when that happens...will they contain some treasures? I always wonder why they donate to a bookshop when there's a charity shop next door. It's as if they're shunning charity in favour of a commercial business - which is kind of surprising, but then, they are donating towards the cause of keeping independent second-hand bookshops alive, therefore still being charitable, in another way.

I rummage through, pulling them out and pricing them up - nothing special, really. Then this, a copy of collected poems by Philip Larkin. I didn't spot the clue, coloured in lettering, on the cover, opened it up and flicked through to find pages of marginalia like this...


...which, you have to admit, goes beyond the normal notes, taking it to an artform. This person obviously couldn't be bothered with a notebook. Visually, it immediately struck me as appealing. 

I've never written in a book, not once. It wouldn't feel right. But then, I've never studies literature, although even if I had, writing in a book as opposed to a notebook would never occur to me. It's kind of iconoclastic. Literary vandalism. And I applaud it. I wonder if they passed their exam. I wonder if they cheered at the recent news that Larkin has been removed from the GCSE English Literature poetry anthology because they hated his work. Or booed because they loved it and thought it worthy of inclusion? Yes, Larkin got the boot, as did William Blake, Thomas Hardy and Wilfred Owen, along with others. In the name of 'diversity'.

I knew I had to do something with the marginalia, so this morning I set about experimenting with some printing. As it developed, I thought of Dieter Roth's scribbles, without turning to one of the monographs I have. I didn't want to try to copy something he did, but work in his spirit of print, print and print again.  Here's what I produced...

RTomens, 2022


TTFN

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