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Dirge Without Music, Poems by Edna St Vincent Millay

Item date(s): 2016

Mary Minicka


Medium: Watercolour paper
Technique: Handwritten with acrylic ink
Edition: Unique

Type: Accordion fold
Theme(s): Grief; Poetry

Place publication: Cape Town
Publisher: The artist
Exhibition 2017

Reference note:
A rendering of the poem 'Dirge without music', by Edna St Vincent Millay.

I wanted to create a book where actual text was used, as opposed to an imagined text. The challenge was to then create a suitable physical embodiment of the poem. I wanted to use the meandering accordion format to literally enfold the poem's different lines within each other to create a sense of the circularity of the grieving process.

110 x 105 x 19mm

The full text of the original poem used is available



Exhibition notes:
‘Booknesses: Contemporary South African Artist's Books’.

FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg.

Curated by David Paton and Eugene Hon.

24 March - 5 May 2017



Ref: DP/17055

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