The Velvet Wire.
Granary Books, 2024. Item #3827
10 x 14 in., 28 pp. with Japanese paper flyleaf. Sewn in St. Armand black paper wrappers, and foil-stamped cover. Bound with silver thread. Housed in vellum dust jacket with foil-stamped diamond.
From the poet/artists:
“The Velvet Wire by Anne Waldman (b. 1945) & No Land (b. 1991) is a book of fine-art, poetry, telepathic voyage, & mentorship between sister-poets in an intergenerational transmission.
Anne Waldman & No Land met on the street in 2012, exchanging a flower and a few words. Over the following decade, together the two poets have created forty-plus collaborative works, weaving their shared sensibilities in the realms of poetry, art, cinema, performance, and activism. The Velvet Wire is an archival reliquary book of many of their collaborations.
In The Velvet Wire, Waldman & No Land offer poems to one another and write to the wider atmosphere of our time. No Land's artworks illuminate an understanding of Waldman's kinetic, delicate, empathic writings. The pair speak to each other in devotional texts, journal-memories of their travels, and through codes of the poet's vow and path. The spirits of bygone elders appear such as-- Gregory Corso, Giordano Bruno, Bob Dylan, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Maria Sabina & others. As if composed thru a cinematic taxi-eye-- whirring thru the streets of Mexico City, Colorado, & NYC where the poets have worked together--- The Velvet Wire spans over a decade of imagery and poetry.”
Anne Waldman, a noted poet whose previous Granary Books publications include Kin (with Susan Rothenberg), Homage to Allen G (with George Schneeman), and Nine Nights Meditation (with Donna Dennis), has long championed incoming generations of poetry through her publishing work at Angel Hair Books, her foundational leadership at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and her participation in global poetry communities.
No Land, a poet, performer, photographer, and artist, has extensively documented the poetry communities of New York City and beyond, working within the realms of Beat and postwar avant-garde practices to create cine-poems, artworks, and performances.
Waldman and No Land have collaborated on films such as Outrider, Crepuscular, Evening of the Day, and Mercy-Eyed. No Land has contributed artwork to Waldman’s books and albums, including Bard, Kinetic and SCIAMACHY, and her photography and Anne Waldman’s poetry are often published side-by-side. They frequently travel to Mexico and Colorado for collaborations.
The book was designed in the spirit of Bardo Matrix publications, with handmade paper wrappers, Japanese paper tipped in, and metallic elements including a silver-stamped cover. Laura Duval and No Land developed the design concept. Jason Walz printed the archival giclée page spreads at Uncommonbindery. The binding is by Judith Ivry, and includes foilstamped black St. Armand wrappers, sewn binding with silver thread, and a foilstamped vellum jacket.
This is from an edition of 33 copies, of which 5 copies are hors commerce. As new.
All photographs copyright and courtesy of Uncommonbindery, via Jason Walz.
Price: $2,000.00