Literary diary 2013 is finally released

Here they are  - Literary diaries 2013, weekly planners with a poem for each month written by twelve wonderful Oxford poets - Edward Pope, Dan Holloway, George Chopping, Anna McCrory, Lucy Ayrton, Rob Sykes, Adam Flint, Stephen Hancock, Tina Sederholm, Henry Stead, Paul Askew, Anna Hobson and the intro poem by Dennis Harrison.

The diaries are completely handmade, hand-stitched, recycled and recyclable and waiting for your NewYear's plans. 

You can have them for £8 each at the Albion Beatnik (34 Walton Street), several copies are already in stock. I shall gradually make more copies and you can also reserve them by e-mail.

Literary diary 2013 coming soon

Two months ago I got an idea to create a Literary diary/planner for 2013, which would contain both - a weekly planner and poetry for each month.

I'm really grateful I managed to find 12 great Oxford poets who all agreed to write a poem for the diary. They were all wonderful and the upcoming year will certainly be too with their lovely poems :-) 

You can already look forward to poems by

Edward Pope for January

Dan Holloway for February

George Chopping for March

Anna McCrory for April

Lucy Ayrton for May

Rob Sykes for June

Adam Flint for July

Stephen Hancock for August

Tina Sederholm for September

Henry Stead for October

Paul Askew for November

Anna Hobson for December
and
the foreword from Dennis Harrison

I'm currently working on the typesetting and it'll take me few more days before I start printing and stitching them all together, but I can already show the design of the cover and what it's made of :-)

I was browsing at the Albion Beatnik trying to find some inspiration and I found this Henry Green's book in secondhand section. 

I think 'Loving, Living and Party going' sounds quite promising and inspiring and perhaps that's what we all need for the next year :-) 

So after this shallow judgement of the book by it's cover, actually title, I decided to use the pages of this book as a material for the cover of the Literary diary.

I spent some time playing with glue and knife and templates and ink and made a lot of mess everywhere, but finally here they are - pile of boards waiting for the printed content and the stitching.

The finished Literary diaries will be available from the Albion Beatnik Bookstore hopefully from the second week of October.

Bookbinding courses in October

You can now book places on upcoming bookbinding courses in October. Also, there's one last September course - Thursday 27th starting at 5pm at the Albion Beatnik, 34 Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6AA. 

You can check the dates and types of courses and book a place here http://www.immaginacija.com/bookbinding-courses

Lapsang souchong haiku

I've been playing with lapsang souchong tea bags and a sewing machine to create some sort of visual poetry. The result is below. Tea bags are sewn together both vertically and horizontally and attached to a bamboo stick.

Some of the tea bags were brewed so the sculpture also smells properly :-)

You can recognise lapsang souchong by its very strong smoky flavour which comes from the process of smoke-drying its leaves over pinewood fires.

I've written a haiku about lapsang and printed it on the tea bags. I've attached a label (made of handmade paper with tea leaves) with the title of the haiku hand-printed on it. It reads vertically which gives a clue how to read the haiku on the teabags. Vertical direction of the text should evoke the flow of pouring water.

Lapsang souchong haiku

burning pinewood

hot delightful sip
ancient love in a teacup

Cutting books

Few pictures of my last decoration made from an old book. "A" and "B" as in the Albion Beatnik, the best bookshop in Oxford, where you can also find a lot of wonderful and undamaged books :)

Courses courses courses

There are next dates for the courses in the booking form so you can book a place or if none of them suit you, email me and arrange an individual date.

Bookbinding courses at the Albion Beatnik

Apart from hundreds of notebooks and diaries I still keep making, I also started running short bookbinding courses. Within three hours you can learn the basics of a particular bookbinding style and at the and make your own notebook.

At the moment there are few dates for the course of Coptic binding but soon I'd like to start doing several different bookbinding styles.

If you live in Oxford or somewhere close and would like to come for a course, you can book a place on my website.

Blog revision (yes, again)

Yet again it took me incredibly long time to revise all the posts on this ancient blog of mine. You who already know me that this will probably happen million times again in the future, well this is just me...
I actually like some of those old posts and also I don't want to leave this original blog address, so I have hidden few things, changes other things, changed the design so it goes better with my website and I will try to keep writing somehow... Hopefully I'll come with something new and first of all I'd like to write more about what I do in my days which I spent in my improvised home bookbindery :-)