Julia: Look, I’m waving my mittens at you frantically. What’s going on? Mike: I know exactly what’s going on because of our ‘language of gloves’ game, which was a big hit in our recent Keats-related event at the excellent Hastings Book Festival in September. By the Regency era, slinky-glove-semaphore had developed into a fantastically elaborate …
Author archives: blownrose
‘Talk to me of monstrous breakfasts!’
(We’ve just been to the Lake District to perform ‘A Joy Forever: Keats, Wordsworth and other loaded encounters’ at Rydal Mount) Julia: So, about those ‘monstrous breakfasts’ … Mike: Well, you found that phrase in Keats’ letters. Which we took to mean expansive (we had monstrous great breakfasts every morning of our Lakes stay at …
A Tour Forever
We’re taking our new book A Joy Forever: a walk out with John Keats on tour. As well as the title of our book, A Joy Forever is the name of our Keats-themed reading series in which we take a playful and social approach to the life and writing of the poet. We’ve performed at Keats House in Hampstead, the Keats …
Health & Safety
I enjoyed my one term of school metalwork. Wielding a rasp as long as my 11 year old arm, I made a wobbly spinner, an enamelled copper pendant and a tiny tin man to balance on your outstretched finger. It’s been a long while since the teacher, Mr Russell, set up a solder-blistered portable tv …
Burnt Fingers
It’s close work, letterpress. Boggling slightly, we sat hunched over a drawer of Garamond, havering over which tiny brass moulds to queue up in the chase, to reproduce our text. Don’t drop letters, they’ll never be found. Don’t pick a wrong one. Don’t put a wrong choice back in the wrong cell. We then moved …
What’s next
A wrong turn driving to Suffolk once landed us in Essex, and the resulting conversation ultimately inspired Julia’s pamphlet Now You Can Look We have googledoc gigabytes of similar accidental ideas that will one day lead to the next books or the next events. When time and money allow, this is where we’ll tell you about them.