I was reading Michelle Mach’s blog Beads and Books a couple of weeks ago, and she had posted an intriguing idea for a blog hop: Book Spine Poetry.
Book Spine Poetry was pioneered by American conceptual artist Nina Katchadourian in the early 1990s. The basic principle is to create a cluster of books, whose titles make a poem when read in sequence:
The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library’s holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.
from Nina Katchadourian.com
Anyway, the idea quite took my fancy as I have a lot of books. So I spent a bit of time browsing through my library and came up with a couple of sequences that I rather liked.
The hunger games
Written on the body
Eat me
An echo in the bone
Finally, I couldn’t resist using some of my favourite jewellery books to create a book spine poem. What do you think?
Thanks for a fun intro to Book Spine Poetry, Michelle! There are a couple of others playing along, including my sister Heidi, who knew Nina Katchadourian in the early 1990s. Why don’t you pop over and see what they came up with??
Love these! I think if I got started, I’d be hunting through my books all day. Too much fun!
Hi Melissa, Thanks for joining the blog hop! How fun that you and Mary did ones that were jewelry-related. I especially like your “Hunger Games” poem. “An echo in the bone” is a fabulous last line!
What a WONDERFUL Idea!!! Love all of your poems Melissa!!! Have a Blessed Day!
Looks like you had fun with the book spine poetry. I had to smile when I saw some of the same titles I use in my jewelry inspired one.
That’s really cool! I had to giggle at “Eat Me”!
very clever!
what a cute idea. I’ve never played this game. all your books look supremely readable