Prose poem Ockers, from Wayzgoose Press

sold

Bold, brash and colorful!

(Wayzgoose Press) Ockers. A prose poem by the poet called π.o. - or Pi.O. Katoomba. NSW. Australia. 1999. Concertina format. Approximately 40′ long when fully opened, folds into 14″ x 19.5″ pages. Conceived, designed and illustrated with linocuts by Mike Hudson, and the type set by Jadwiga Jarvis. All aspects of production were manually executed at the press by the two partners. Printed letterpress on Magnani Incisioni using a Western proof press. Printed cloth covered portfolio together with an Introduction and a Glossary of Ockerisms. No. 22 in an edition of 40 signed and numbered copies, of which numbers I-V are not for sale. Prospectus laid in. Fine.

This work was part of an ongoing series of extravagant typographic acrobatics - pushing the envelope with the marriage of exciting typography and exacting and complex illustration. All these factors combine to dramatize and express the energy and aesthetic shock of new contemporary poetry. The partnership of Jadwiga Jarvis and Mike Hudson has previously published Dada Kampfen un Leben und Tod (Dada fight for Life and Death) in 1996, and The Terrific Days of Summer in 1998. (Both these titles sold out on publication.) In this series of typographical exuberances they recently published their ‘tour de force’ - Ockers. Ockers is a prose poem by the contemporary Greek-born Australian poet called ?.o. - or Pi.O. (N.B. ?.o. wrote one of the two introductory pieces for Dada Kampfen.) It’s a satirical look at the “Ocker” phenomenon as seen through the eyes of a bemused outsider. The Ocker rage (one could hardly call it a ‘cultural’ movement) lasted for about a decade: films were made, fame and fortune achieved by some (Paul Hogan of “Crocodile Dundee” amongst them). In international terms, Jonathan Swift’s definition of a ‘yahoo’ as used in Gulliver’s Travels can be related to an Ocker.

The poem is a kind of social documentary of the events of the time. Since the whole thing was a bit of a joke, the work is treated assuch and designed a la comic book: voice balloons, thought bubbles, frames around the pages, etc. To keep in the spirit of ‘Ockerism’ (bold, brash and boisterous), and at the same time with the art/commercial art/comic book trends of the 60s and 70s, the illustrations (big, bold, boisterous and very colorful) have echoes of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol mixed in with pure Mike Hudson. The typography is, as ever, anarchic, using every sans serif known to man (plus a few unknown, hand drawn especially forthe occasion) and a few serifed type faces thrown in. The colors are numerous, the number of illustrations too great to count. The average number of passes through the press per page was EIGHT, often more … Partly due to the number of different colors used, and partly to the complexity of the layout - in a couple of instances four passes just to print all the black elements on the page.

The Wayzgoose Press’s books in this series are held by the following institutions: The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Cary Graphic Arts Collection, Rochester Institute of Technology; Sterling Memorial Library, Yale; Marriott Library, University of Utah; Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State; Green Library, Stanford University;University of Ohio Library, Athens; Louisiana State University Special Collections Library, Baton Rouge; The British Library, London;as well as in distinguished private collections.

As part of their grand trilogy of illustrated ‘in-your-face’ typographically exuberant book-making, this work, with its roistering,rollicking narrative, is arguably one of their best and boldest books!! The bulk of the edition was sold pre-publication.