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’.