DAY 4/7 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 4/7  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 fourth book is GRINGOSTROIKA by Jules Boykoff, sized at about 4 x 2.5 inches. Yet this post is more about its publisher, Dusie which was founded by poet Susana Gardner (you can read about Dusie). As shown through Jules’ book, Dusie released/releases small poetry books crafted from evocative paper ephemera—an approach that bespeaks the ineffability of poetry as well as a concern for the environment that manifests itself in recycling. As regards the latter, the approach also speaks to the issue of privilege, that is, how trash is defined—a relevant concern if one believes (as I do) that poetry can be found anywhere. Its approach means that book covers of the same title are often different; the last image shows five different covers to IT’S CURTAINS, one of my own books I was fortunate to have Dusie publish.

Boykoff’s book was from 2006 and part of Dusie’s innovative approach to poetry publishing. That is, not just publishing innovative poetry but disrupting traditional publishing into, for example, coop efforts. Thus, you can see the pun on Title Page about how it calls its book a “WE/E” book, not just referencing “wee” but also the homonym “we”.

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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 #4.

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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.