Eileen R. Tabios is a poet working in multiple genres and in-between. She also loves books by writing, reading, publishing, critiquing, romancing and advocating for them. This blog will feature her bibliophilic activities with posts on current book engagements and links to her books and projects related to books.

Monday, May 4, 2020

BOOK 2/7 FOR MINIATURE BOOK SOCIETY


I’m a new member of the Miniature Book Society and I was nominated to post 7 books for MBS’ Facebook page. "Miniature" books are sized at 3-4 inches or less. I’ll be replicating the posts on this blog for the next 7 days.

DAY 2/7  My favorite miniature book covers

MBS
I’m sharing books—some handmade—by some of today’s contemporary poets. These are one-off editions and likely would not be shown elsewhere. My second book is VOYAGE by Hungarian poet Marton Koppany. Marton is a master poet—one of the most adept practitioners worldwide of visual poetry which (generally) does not rely on the normative use of words. There is much information about him if you Google him; I do like this personal homage to him. You also can see a convenient summary of hs works HERE

Marton hand-made VOYAGE in 2013 for a project I had curated, “Sit With Moi.” Before collecting miniature books, I collected miniature chairs and through this project asked poets and artists to make books small enough to place on those chairs. Several of those books end up qualifying to be “miniature” by MBS standards. VOYAGE is sized 2 x 2 inches.

The background explains why the “protagonist” in VOYAGE is a chair. You can interpret it any way you wish but my interpretation is to note how the chair is yellow at the start of its “voyage,” the voyage might be symbolized by the blue waters (could be an ocean) and the end of the trip shows how the protagonist has been changed by the voyage so that the chair is now the same color as the blue waters. Note, too, how the yellow chair at the start of the trip is incomplete whereas the chair at end of trip can be viewed as complete if one were to believe the front two legs are the same color as the blue ocean. There’s a saying, “Color is a narrative,” and Marton shows it to be so through his elegant, minimalist treatment.




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Today I nominate any new member of MBS. I love seeing all the books already shared, AND I’m also interested in the *gateway* books—those that made you discover mini books or the first books you’re collecting. Some of the books I’m posting, for example, were created before I knew that miniature books were a thing. So I nominate MBS New Member #2.
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This is a challenge for contributing to the spread of reading culture. The method of participation is to post a favorite book, one book per day, for 7 days. You upload some images with a short explanation about the book and invite one FB friend to participate in this challenge.



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