Saturday 16 August, 2008

Foreign tongues

Virginia and I have been doing a letterpress workshop at Idlewild Press this weekend. It's absolutely fantastic. (For those interested more will be held on September 27 and 28, and October 25 & 26).

These sentences are from Anna Akhmatova's poem 'Courage' and read (I think - not on top of the reading backwards business): 'from servitude in foreign chains,/ keep you alive, great Russian word,/ fit for the tongues of our children's children'. I had to come up with a manageable plan so decided to set the poems I am going to read at St Paul's Cathedral on Sunday August 31.

It took me 5 hours to set 150 words - and that's before I've proofed them so any fantasies I have about setting my next novel seem either very ambitious, very Zen, or so eccentric that I might as well just give up on the idea of ever making money on my writing again. Though I must say the idea of tyesetting a novel about a typesetter has it's appeal.

Tomorrow: printing.