Babel. Edition 9 # 1. Cheryl Penn and David Stone.

I have not done a large collaboration for quite a quite a while, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how it pans out.  The idea is that I send participants 2 copies of a chapbook titled Babel, one to keep and one to alter.  The original altered copy is sent back to me and I make an edition of 7.  I keep one, two get sent back to the artist, one bound, one unbound for them to copy and reproduce if they wish.  They also receive 5 other chapbooks from other artists who have followed this same process. 

The first one I have tackled is with the poet David Stone (USA). As a wordsmith David is immediately responsive to titles and images and his poetry is its usual enigmatic, apparently disconnected phrases and words which, once read somehow make total sense. They also evoke strong mental imagery. 

“bracketed barriers enclosed the summation of

orders

toes tagged

silence lost” 

As I had a bit of time on my hands, the copies I made have numerous hand painted elements, but I‘m not sure it this practice will remain, although 7 copies is quite manageable. There are an extra few copies for him and I to both distribute. 

The original looks like the image below (the centre spread) - and if you would like to participate, please let me know.