Bookmash: Periodic Tales from Hell

It’s a while since I’ve made a bookmash, i.e., a book spine poem. Here’s a new one:

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Periodic Tales from Hell

Periodic
tales from hell:
bad blood,
winterwood,
The night torn
mad with footsteps.
This year it
will be different.

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Thanks to the authors: Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, Lorna Sage, Patrick McCabe, Charles Bukowski, and Maeve Binchy; and to Nina Katchadourian for the idea.

My bookmash archive has more of these and links to other people’s.

Book spine mashups

There was a minor book avalanche here last weekend. I removed one from its tower, which toppled unstoppably against its neighbour, and so on, with results that need hardly be described at length. Luckily there were no casualties: no toes crushed or book spines broken, just a torn cover getting torn some more. I took the hint and arranged them more stably. (And yes, I need a new bookshelf, or a dozen.)

It prompted me to carry out a plan that had just taken seed. A little earlier I had come across Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books project and immediately wanted to try it. The tangling of titles, the possibilities of ‘found form’ and cut-up wordplay — as a game it was irresistible. I took photos of a few, and have written them as mini-poems for ease of reading and to see how they appear in verse:

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How it is

How it is, the way that I went
Into the wild ancient world
Where the wasteland ends.

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Moondust

Chew on this moondust –
Good enough to eat.

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