Supported by Poetry Daily and the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, the Power Poems contest offers a prize of a limited-edition letterpress broadside created by VABC artists and an appearance on Poetry Daily’s internationally reviewed website. See previous winning broadsides HERE.

Grand Prize

30 limited-edition, letterpressed broadsides, created by artists at the VABC, and special publication of the winning poem on Poetry Daily (poems.com).

Contest Guidelines

Submission size: Two poems per submission. Each submission should have a separate entry form. Multiple submissions may be sent in the same entry packet, with appropriate forms and fees enclosed.

Entry fee: $15 per submission made payable to the “Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.” (The VABC is a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.)

Entry form: Found online HERE. For a printed form, send an SASE to: Power Poems / Virginia Foundation for the Humanities /145 Ednam Drive / Charlottesville, VA 22903. Submissions received without a completed entry form will not be eligible.

Eligibility: Contest open to any poet(s) living and writing in the United States who are not employees, affiliates, or students of Poetry Daily, or the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Rights to works must reside with the submitting poets, though they may have been previously published. Poems must be original work by eligible submitters.

Considerations: No poem should be longer than one 8.5”x11” page in 12 pt font. Poems should be stapled together and submitted “blind,” with no identifying information in the poem and contact info appearing only on the entry form. Winning poems and honorable mentions may be made available online for a limited time on the VABC website, pending permission of the author.

Deadline: Submissions must be postmarked by September 15, 2012.

Notification: Winners will be announced by January 2013.

Judges: Poets and artists of the Virginia Arts of the Book Center. Selections will be made on literary merit, engagement of theme, and potential for visual interest as a broadside.  Judges are poets whose backgrounds are in poetry, publishing, and book arts. Each has experience with nationally recognized journals, anthologies, prize committees, and annual VABC broadside contests.

A limited number are available, contact kmcfadden@virginia.edu

Spring 2012 Coptic Book class

Top row: Roger Williams, Lindsey Mears (instructor), Anne Causey, Addeane Caelleigh, Melissa Dimmitt; Bottom row: Kevin McFadden, Kristin Adolfson (instructor), and Melanie Lower.

May 1 – May 31

Thursday, May 17 – 6PM, Live reading of Borges’s “The Circular Ruins” by storyteller Browning Porter, followed by refreshments and discussion. (Bring a circular snack to share.)

VABC welcomes “The Circular Ruins” to the Art on Ivy Gallery, installed by VABC gallery curator Dean Dass.

Based on a short story from 1942 by Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins is the sixth annual publication from The Printmakers Left, and that group’s first bound publication. The present exhibition includes unbound excerpts, working proofs, alternative endings, out-takes and debris. An evolving group of faculty, students, visiting artists, alumni and friends are involved in The Printmakers Left projects. Past projects have included The Labyrinth and The End of Language. 

The Circular Ruins was a project of some eighteen months, and has resulted in a bound volume of prints, poems and prose of about 200 pages.  The edition is 25. 1/25 is in Special Collections, University of Virginia. The work on this project was collaborative in that on many pages two, three or more participants have worked together.  Many diverse printing technologies were employed, including etching, lithography, letterpress, screen-printing, and inkjet.  These media are layered throughout the leaves of the book, and constitute a veritable history of means and expression. Some pages were sanded down; others were stained. Some pages were scorched rather than inked and printed. Yet this constructed history of collaboration provides only one approach to the many layers of allegory in Borges’ story “The Circular Ruins.”  For in the end of the story, Borges’ protagonist, who would dream into existence another human, discovers that he himself is already but the dream of another.

Participants:  Adam Wolpa, Akemi Ohira Rollando, Alan Harmon,  Anne Beck, Bogdan Achimescu, Chris Pace, Chris Thomas, David Bendernagel, David Swan, Dean Dass, Debra Fabrizzi, Eleanor Hanson, Elizabeth Stark, John Leahy, Justin Quinn,  Ken Wood, Lisa Russ Spaar, Maggie Booth, Robert Glasgow,  Roland Lusk, Sanghee Yoo, Sarah Marshall, and Thomas Doran.

Virginia Arts of the Book Center
2125 Ivy Road, “behind the Art Box”

Sunday, March 25, Noon to 2PM

Join us for a special event at the VABC during the 2012 Virginia Festival of the Book, Sunday, March 25. Formal presentation from Noon to 2PM…and informal open house on into the afternoon!

Sci-fi illustrator and medieval manuscript illuminator Randy Asplund talks about and demonstrates some of his work.

Visual and book artist Greg Kelly talks about his ten-year-in-the-making-pen-ink-collage collection that became a limited-edition book, Pigeon.

Join us for thought from the artists, exhibitions, demonstrations and a little insight into Charlottesville’s creative book arts community, Virginia Arts of the Book Center.

Work from these artists and other VABC works will be on sale. Drop by, it’ll be illuminating!

Tuition: $500 (Member and Nonmember price, UVa Education Benefit Eligible)
VABC Members not using Education Benefit receive $50 discount ($450)

Contact kmcfadden@virginia.edu for inquiries and registrationIn this Intensive Bookbinding Certification course we will master coptic binding, a “glueless” bookbinding technique. The course will begin with a paste paper workshop to create decorative covers for our books.    We will then cover everything from the importance of paper and grain direction, cloth and board types, stitching techniques, bookbinding tools, planning and measuring, sewing, and other bookmaking embellishments. By the end of the class, students will have a bookmaking vocabulary, two to three coptic sewn books, as well as the skills to create their own hand-bound book projects. VABC Certification for Coptic Bookbinding upon successful completion of the class.

March 27: Paste Paper workshop
April 3:  Introduction to tools, paper, bookcloth, thread, folding, signatures
April 10: Creating the covers, hole drilling
April 17: Coptic sewing – sewing on the bench
April  24:  Continuation of coptic sewing
May 1: Finishing work session, sharing, evaluations

See additional classes offered by the VABC

Image from Greg Antrim Kelly's "Pigeon"

March 1-29
Art on Ivy Gallery / Virginia Arts of the Book Center
2125 Ivy Road, Charlottesville (“The Art Box entrance”)
9:30 – 5:30 M-F, 10AM-4PM Sat, Closed Sunday

Join us in welcoming “Pigeon,” an exhibition by Greg Antrim Kelly of pencil and ink drawings. Featuring selections of 20 original pieces that appeared in Kelly’s limited-edition collection of 50, “Pigeon” covers a span of ten years of work.

“Pigeon” is a self-portrait of sorts, collected in an unbound illustrative book project. The project, partially completed at VABC, is now contained in the Library of Congress Rare Books Collection. Selected individual originals will be for sale as well as the full limited-edition collection. If you are interested in purchasing any of Kelly’s work, please contact Kevin McFadden of the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, kmcfadden@virginia.edu.

Exhibit special events:

Friday, March 16, 5-7PM, opening reception, food, refreshments…and Greg!

Sunday, March 25, 12-2PM, Virginia Festival of the Book event, a book artists’ talk of works by Greg Kelly and medieval manuscript illustrator Randy Asplund.

More classes on the way! Maybe you want to bookmark our full class schedule page for reference.

Bookmakers corner drop in classes are taking shape too.

Sat, Apr 28 and May 5

Japanese Wood Block Class
Instructor: Lana Lambert
Fee:  $150 members, $175 non-members
Materials:
Materials provided, including tools.

We had a great time with the Japanese wood block printing class last summer…and we know there’s even more interest for more out there. Lana Lambert is willing to instruct another set of sessions.

You will need to bring xerox copy of an image that is no larger than 5″x7″.  We will be using a traditional japanese printing sumi so it is helpful if you begin with a image that is black and white.  You can choose a photograph or drawing but make sure it is an image that you are comfortable marking on as we will be using carbon paper to trace it to our block.  Bring your zen and your curiosity and that’s pretty much it!
Contact kmcfadden@virginia.edu for inquiries and registration.

Sat, Apr 28 through Sat, Jun 2
6 Saturdays, 10 a.m. –  Noon
Design with Type Certification Course*
Instructor: Josef Beery
Fee: $500 (Member and Nonmember price, *UVa Education Benefit Eligible)
VABC Members not using Education Benefit receive $50 discount ($450)
In this Design Certification Course students will receive a strong introduction to typography and design for print. The course will be held in the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, home to a letterpress printing laboratory with hundreds of cases of wood and metal type. The course will outline the history of printing, type design, and book production. Students will learn the basics of design for the printed page through hands on work. Students will use conventional page layout software on their own desktop computers to complete assignments in the design of posters, brochures, magazine articles, and books. At the completion of the course students will receive a certificate of mastery in “Design with Type.”
Contact kmcfadden@virginia.edu for inquiries and registration.

Contest poems were to engage the theme of music. Honorable mentions go to poets Mary Pinard (Roslindale, MA) for “Wanting an Accordion,” Mike Schneider (Pittsburgh, PA) for “Crazy Blues,” and Kathleen Winter (Glen Ellen, CA) for “Mia Vita Violenta.”

The Virginia Arts of the Book Center, a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, is a community of artists exploring books, paper, and printmaking. Selections for its annual contest on a rotating theme are judged for high literary quality and suitability for visual interpretation.

TAPS

I’m going to buy a bugle
and hold it to my mouth.

Lips is all it takes. And tongue.
It’s in the breath that has no lapse,

and all through warming brass
it gives the simplest tune.

Hidden, I will blow the bugle
into life, as if the sound comes

from another county, low to high,
then lowering itself.

I need a song,
something slightly out of keeping

and behind a lone and reaching
cypress, treble clef of evergreen.

*********************
Anne Harding Woodworth’s fourth book of poetry is The Artemis Sonnets, Etc. (2011). She is also the author of two chapbooks. She is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library and divides her time between Washington, DC, and Cedar Mountain, NC.

Josef Beery poster

April 28 through June 2
Design with Type Certification Course

Virginia Arts of the Book Center
2125 Ivy Road (Ivy Road Shopping Center)
6 Saturdays, 10:00 AM-12:00 Noon

Instructor: Josef Beery

Tuition: $500 (Member and Nonmember price, UVa Education Benefit Eligible)
VABC Members not using Education Benefit receive $50 discount ($450)

Contact kmcfadden@virginia.edu for inquiries and registration.

In this Design Certification Course students will receive a strong introduction to typography and design for print. The course will be held in the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, home to a letterpress printing laboratory with hundreds of cases of wood and metal type. The course will outline the history of printing, type design, and book production. Students will learn the basics of design for the printed page through hands on work. Students will use conventional page layout software on their own desktop computers to complete assignments in the design of posters, brochures, magazine articles, and books. At the completion of the course students will receive a certificate of mastery in “Design with Type.”

Schedule:

April 28 Hands-on exploration of typographic and printing history.

May 5 Introduction to the letter form and traditional type families. Assignment: Poster

May 12 Introduction to basic principles of type composition. Assignment: Brochure

May 19 Use of color and images in layout. Assignment: Magazine Article

May 26 Design of the book. Assignment: Booklet

June 2 Printing and binding techniques in the digital age.