The brassy red hair and cloud white skin of Ms Prudence Upton greeted me at 9am on the pin point yesterday morning. Prudence is the chief photographer for this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival and a graphic designer who clipped and positioned the poems onto fabric which will feature in the Occasional Poetry window. Every editor and curator and designer will know the traumatic experiences that accompany laying text up for printing, as if mistakes find you out from every angle of the page and place themselves within the spaces, columns, borders and patterns of your task. Pru and I back and forthed commas, full stops, spelling corrections and angles until we had three perfect fabric poems.
These three poems were then sent to the Charing Cross Photoshop (11 Albion Street Waverley, NSW) where a young girl with soft black curls tickling her cheeks and a sprightly French printer and photographer (also her father) had produced a trio of poem fabrics that stretch from my head to my waist, a perfect fit if I was to wear them. These printed poems are remarkably different to the hand written ones each of the poets have supplied me with.
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Having swallowed the last slice of apple I’m staring at the fan. And planning to be at Sydney Writers’ Festival space by 10.30 where the Occasional crew will paint and hang out to dry the backdrop for the installation, ready for the opening night on Wednesday 31st May. My car is being opened up and stitched together by Bill the mechanic and so I’m about to knock on my neighbour’s door and request to borrow her Ute to collect the dummies from their hotel. My neighbour assured me, a few days back, I can borrow her Ute anytime, but words mean nothing without actions and so I will start the Saturday with a test of Truth.
