It’s been a good week for Post and Letters, and Post Letters! We’re busy planning an action camp for a festival later this year (watch this space). We met with the Royal Academy to discuss their forthcoming exhibition about Van Gogh and his letters (it’s the first show since 1968 to bring so many of his letters to London, and the curatorial team are going to show us how his letters relate, correlate and correspond to his art). We corresponded with the amazing poet, David Morley (whose poetry books we all urge you to read), about the possibility of some writing from him (will say no more for now, but it’s very exciting). And after work today, Philip is meeting with Jonah at the British Library to discuss an e-learning project they’re doing with secondary school kids on how to campaign using letters. So it’s Post A-go-go. Keep writing your letters. We need to fill the hands of our postmen and women with beautiful, loving, complex letters and objects.
Archive for March, 2009
What’s The Collective Noun For A Group Of Letterboxes?
In Post in the World on March 27, 2009 at 11:21 am
A collection? A gossip? A huddle? A city? A babel? Comment with your own collective noun!
The Price of Post
In Letter Writing, Post History, Post in the World on March 24, 2009 at 10:57 amPost Letters! is about making the objects that post carriers deliver more beautiful or more interesting. So why not sign up now for the Royal Mail’s new Matter. It’s free post in a box. OK – so it’s a glamourised way of advertising – but it ticks all the postal boxes. Better than Matter, perhaps, but not free, is The Thing Quarterly – the periodical that is a four-yearly object sent to your door. I love the Thing and I want Post Letters! to set up the UK version. I wonder if Thing would be interested?
Of more postal weight, the letter as campaigning device is cropping up more and more. Look at Ken Lawrence’s collection of postal memorabilia (if that’s the right word) from the Concentration Camps. To counter Holocaust deniers’ claims, Lawrence painstakingly built a collection of letters, postcards, postal documents, leaflets and other materials over a 30 year period. It “includes rare letters from concentration camp inmates, postal documents illustrating Nazi activities and a Hebrew scripture re-used by a German soldier as a parcel wrapper” (pictured).
Postal Bag
In Post Moment on March 24, 2009 at 9:58 amA replica of the postal bags used in the United States over 100 years ago.
The Art of Post
In Post Art on March 21, 2009 at 2:52 pmWandering around London, I sometimes come across post in art or the art of posting. Like this picture by Peter Doig at Tate’s recent retrospective. Called Hitch Hiker and painted at the end of the eighties, the label describes its medium as “Oil on Postal Bags” and up-close you can see them too. Gorgeousness.
Then there’s Oswald by Gerhard Richter (on at the National Portrait Gallery at the moment). I don’t think it’s meant to be of a postman delivering a letter, but it looks like it could be. (In fact, the Oswald could refer to Lee Harvey Oswald – but ambiguity is something Richter cherishes.)
Postman’s Dream
In Philosophy of Post, Post Moment, Post in the World on March 21, 2009 at 1:43 pmThere are many ways to write a letter, many places to write letters in. There are a good number of projects set up by enthusiastic people trying to promote the letter. Post Letters! knows the irony of its birth. (Yes, we just added the exclamation mark. We think it’s appropriate.) Post Letters! is both a description of our times and a call to action, using web 2.0 technology to promote pre-web activity. In many ways, the internet is post. iPhones are really just iPost. Even as I type, I can see to my left a button that says New Post. Email programmes have been singing You’ve Got Mail for years. In many ways, we’re Peri Letters! Always in between. A letter certainly is. A letter exists best when it’s just been sealed and is about to be opened.
Anyway, in other news – Post Letters! is looking for at least three real-life postmen or women who want to write about being postpeople. Email us. Also, we’ve just fallen in love again. This time – with the Letter Writers’ Alliance. Plus, you can download your own envelope.
An Indian Letter Pouffe
In Post Moment, Uncategorized on March 20, 2009 at 7:08 pmI’m reading Julian Barnes’s Book of Death (Nothing To Be Frightened Of). In it he remembers clearing out his parents’ bungalow.
I found a small stack of postcards dating from the 1930s to the 1980s All had been sent from abroad; clearly those posted from within Britain, however flavourful the message, had at some point been culled. Here is my father writing to his mother in the thirties (“Warm greetings from cold Brussels”; “Austria calling!”); my father in Germany to my mother in France (“I’m wondering whether you got all the letters I wrote from England. Did you?”); my father to his small sons at home (“I hope you are doing your duty and listening to the Test Match”), announcing his acquisition of stamps for me and matchboxes for my brother.
The best postal moment comes only two pages later when Barnes stumbles across a circular leather pouffe from his youth. It had been brought back from Allahabad or Madras not full or fat but empty – and ready to stuff.
They stuffed it with the letters of their courtship and early married years. I was an idealistic adolescent, who swerved easily into cynicism when confronted with life’s realities; this was one such moment. How could they have taken their love letters (doubtless kept in ribboned bundles), torn them into tiny pieces, and then watched other people’s fat arses hunker down on top?
… In company, I would now lower myself gently onto the pouffe; alone, I would drop heavily, so that an exhalation might jet out a scrap of blue airmail paper bearing one or other of my parents’ youthful hands.
I Remember Joe Brainard
In Post Moment on March 18, 2009 at 9:34 amJoe Brainard was influenced by Joseph Cornell. I read his book, I Remember, last night. It’s full of postal moments.
Loving Letters
In Letter Writing, Post History, Post Moment, Post in the World on March 16, 2009 at 2:09 pmThanks to brilliant writer Julia Bell (if you haven’t read Dirty Work, I demand you purchase it this instant!) for linking to Post Letters from her blog, Culture Cringe. And thanks to lots of you for writing in to Post Letters and leaving your name and address for free post! We will write back to you, we promise. (And you can be Posted anywhere in the world.)
Meanwhile, this weekend, I visited Raven Row’s new exhibition of Ray Johnson’s mail art. Ray Johnson founded the mail art movement – which involved asking his recipients to add to his work and return through the post. He set up the New York Correspondence School – a conflation of the New York Schools of art and poetry in the 60s and Correspondence Schools. Hush for now, but there will be more on the brilliant Raven Row soon from a Post Letters reviewer.
The exhibition reminded me of my love for all things Joseph Cornell, though – as he’s clearly an influence on Ray Johnson. (Here’s a letter Ray sent Joseph, rather lovely – hints at another letter, in which he enclosed white feathers.) Cornell produced his boxes almost like love letters for people. He famously sent one to Audrey Hepburn, but she promptly sent it back. I’d forgotten, but I once wrote a paper for a Joseph Cornell conference about his letters to Marianne Moore. It didn’t feature, though, (rightly so) in the final book. It was a bit too woolly – but I was captivated by a letter Cornell sent to Moore in which he enclosed blank sheets of Japan Paper Company writing paper. It seems such a great thing to do – send someone the means to write letters.
Meanwhile, why not send your old love letters to The Leaving and the Left?
Post Culture
In Post Art, Post Moment, Post in the World on March 13, 2009 at 10:37 am
O there’s lots of books to read! And lots with post people and letters in too. Try Charles Bukowski’s Post Office. Or the new translation of Stefan Zweig’s The Post Office Girl. Or you might want a bit of Post Theory – so go for Jacques Derrida’s The Post Card or Relays: Literature as An Epoch of the Postal System by Bernhard Seigart. For a lighthearted, more child-like mail moment, try The Jolly Postman (Or Other People’s Letters) – by the Great Ahlbergs. And if you need a break from reading, watch a film – Michael Radford’s Il Postino, for example, with the charming postman Mario Ruoppolo who delivers letters to Pablo Neruda. All this sitting down though – you’ll need a walk. If you’re in or near London, pop down to Victoria area and wander over Artwise’s new curated piece, Fragile. According to the blurb, Fragile “celebrates the tradition of postal communication and considers the nature of letter writing and the permanence of the written word, all of which is examined in these films through the depiction of letters and packages being treated and handled in different ways – at times abstractly, at others literally”. It does this very successfully.
British Parcels Post – Sorting Parcels for Foreign Mail
In Post Art, Post History, Post in the World on March 11, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Posting People and other ideas
In Letter Writing, Philosophy of Post, Post Moment, Post in the World on March 11, 2009 at 4:10 pmJames Abrams tested a loophole in the legislation regarding what can and what can’t be posted. Human remains are banned – we might say, quite rightly. But what about a living human? Can you post a person? To raise money for charity, Abrams posted himself to 60 post offices around the UK, dressed as a parcel. Seven weeks he was bundled into Royal Mail vans and on to motorbikes! (Note also: you can post bees, you can’t post loose Christmas crackers.)
In other news, I’m still so excited about the Douceurs project – which allows you to send post to your future. What I particularly like about this project, is how it is grounded in community and letter writers as people. Do have a good look at the research work undertaken by Lauren Currie – there’s everything from working with older letter writers in Dundee to letting go red balloons in Edinburgh.
More ideas for Post Letters in the future – I’d like to hold a salon-style get-together of like-minded posties. It would probably be in London to begin with – request to receive free post and say if you’re keen to come along. I’d also like to collate Poems in the Post – an ongoing series of poems that feature postmen, letters and all things stamp. There’s plenty out there, but I’m keen to get permission from the poets to feature them – so this may take a while. I have dreams of a post sculpture – a room, a vast room!, full of translucent thread falling from the ceiling with envelopes attached to them. Get people to write letters and fill the envelopes. I don’t know why that image is so compelling for me. If you’d like a piece of free post, I’m taking names and addresses.
I don’t know why, but Post makes me very happy. I have this sneaky suspicion that it could make society happier in general, too. (So why not send post to yourself?)
Blank Letters
In Post Moment on March 9, 2009 at 9:58 amAt the end of the 19th century, you could buy printed cards for every situation that might conceivably require a printed letter. You simply filled in the blanks! Why not make your own blank letters for friends to fill in. Here’s an example of a letter with blanks from the 1880s. I actually can’t work out how you’d fill the blanks in – have a try!
The Mail Slip of Great Glee
In Post in the World on March 6, 2009 at 10:09 amToday I am thinking about mail boxes and mail slots in doors.
On the night of January 10 1840 – when the uniform Penny Post came into being - 112,000 letters were written by our forefather letter writers in the UK, each eager to test and use the new communication network. Imagine! But having a slot in your door to receive post was still very new, unheard of – post having been the privilege of the poets and the Members of Parliament. So a mass door cutting exercise must have taken place! Here’s 19th century writer Harriet Martineau from her autobiography:
We are all putting our letter-boxes on our hall-doors with great glee, anticipating the hearing from brothers and sisters, – a line or two almost every day. The slips in the doors are to save the postmen’s time… So all who wish well to the plan are having slips in their doors. It is proved that poor people do write, or get letters written, wherever a franking privilege exists. When January comes round, do give your sympathy to all the poor pastors’ and tradesmen’s and artisans’ families, who can at last write to one another as if they were all M.P.’s.
The sheer technological advance of having a hole in your door must have been a revolution in itself. Imagine the time saved by the postman! Here’s Rowland Hill in his pamphlet which radicalised the British postal system, setting in place his plans for the universal Penny Post in 1837:
There would not only be no stopping to collect the postage, but probably it would soon be unnecessary even to await the opening of the door, as every house might be provided with a letter box into which the Letter Carrier would drop the letters, and, having knocked, he would pass on as fast as he could walk.
Even to this day, of course, it seems our Letter Carriers can’t walk fast enough (sic).
Post Letters To Your Future
In Post Moment on March 5, 2009 at 5:28 pmTo overcome the rising loss of the postal service, Douceurs is a service solution enabling people to send letters to their future. This poetic service encompasses the beauty, simplicity and personal touch of traditional communication methods. Discover more about this post-Post idea
Post Bird
In Post Moment on March 5, 2009 at 12:00 pm
The curlew is the postbird. “Curlew” – c.1340, from O.Fr. courlieus (13c.), said to be imitative of the bird’s cry but apparently assimilated with corliu “runner, messenger,” from corre “to run.” The bird is a good runner. Curlew and courier (the bespoke postman) share the same etymology. The curlew could be the symbol bird of the Post Letters movement.
Posting/Touching
In Philosophy of Post on March 2, 2009 at 8:54 amWriting a letter to someone means you’re touching them from a distance. And if you don’t touch them, you almost do. You both hold on to a piece of material culture that has particular pertinence. It’s not just that a letter is much more work than, say, a telephone call, an email or – remember them? – a fax. It’s that a letter is, always already, an act of touch from afar. The hard work does, itself, a lot of hard work.
It’s a different kind of touch, though. A mediated touch, purloined by the middle man (or woman). Holding hands handled by another. Do we appreciate the touch-work our Post People undertake every day? Do we even know their name?
Keeping in touch, then, is about keeping in with touch. Post a letter today – touch out!
For more on this, try Pamela Thurschwell’s book on Technology, Literature and Magical Thinking where the idea of “intimacy from a distance” is developed and thought through at greater length.
