Time is a baby. Or it’s a juggernaut, a dragon or a drum machine.
Here are seven braided stories, told like ticker tape on the page.
About time too.
Will Ashon is the author of five full length books, including Strange Labyrinth and Chamber Music: About the Wu-Tang (In 36 Pieces). His most recent book, The Passengers (Faber, 2023), was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. He is also the founder of the independent record label Big Dada Recordings, which he ran for over fifteen years. He lives in London.
‘Think about time for a moment. The physicists tell us it doesn’t exist, at least not in the way we commonly understand. I can’t begin to comprehend what that means, to be honest. And frankly, the physicists can do as they wish with T, their own sweet, initialled baby, fat and bonny in the pram — make her solid or imaginary, or a dragon or my own fear of fear.’
The above excerpt is from one of seven stories included in Will’s book. The stories are printed vertically, so you read them as columns of text that run the entire length of the concertina book – a visual delight that forms surprising, sometimes unsettling, connections.
Each Handbook is published in an edition limited to 25 copies, and priced at £12.50. We’ll be selling them at the books’ launch and at The Free Verse Book and Magazine Fair on 26th April 2025. If you’d like to order copies, please email us and we can sort out PayPal and postage.