Campbell, Ken: Father`s Hook "This book carries a cycle of poetry written during and after the death of my dockworking father. It is dedicated to him and his labouring. The book is in all respects as formally severe as it could be made.
In the print room of the British Museum I found a long, Oriental silk called ‘Admonitions to the Ladies of the Court’. Its visual structure seemed to me to exemplify much of what was good in modern British graphic design at the turn of the 1960s: the confidence to float images in colour fields and work within structures of feeling rather than structures of injunction. To attempt that aesthetic while describing my father’s life of grinding labour was irresistible. The book is on very fine Chinese paper, almost like shirt cloth – it was the first time I fell in love with paper; it was sensuous but could not be pushed around; it had to be worked with; the form thereby found. en., lino block printing, letterpress, plywood, 48p, 13 x 6.5 inch, Ed. of 100, num., sign., London, 1978 Request of availability backnext