pop

In the process of playing around with woven paper last weekend, I stumbled upon a cover design for our next Pania Press poetry chapbook, Pop Riveter by Jen Crawford. The sequence of poems describes a summer job that Jen had a few years ago working in a sail making factory.

Pop Riveter is full of text columns and lists describing the repetitive nature of the tasks that Jen and her co-workers had to carry out: sanding the sail frames, cutting the cloth, glueing, ironing, stapling, trimming, stacking and packing the sails. The rhythmic and repetitive descriptions of the job itself are interspersed with Jen's observations of the people working with her, subtly revealing the interpersonal dynamics and the hierarchical structure of the workplace. All of this is set against a background of pop music blasting over the radio in the factory, with Britney Spears voice bursting into the poems with the lyrics from 'You want a Piece of Me?'

I wanted the cover design for this small (A6) chapbook to replicate some of the processes described in the poems, so cutting slits in the card and weaving strips of paper through it seemed like the best technique. The pop colours work well with the theme of the book, and I'll be creating different colour combinations and woven designs for each book in the edition of 30.

It always feels good when the prototype for a new publication is completed. I've set aside time over the Easter break to make up the edition and I'm really looking forward to it!