Text by Anita Slater

Town in miniature, on paper

Roads and roads of opulent lips scanning the pages of a penny
Cheerful Strawberries, low-hanging buoyancy of stems lay warm to pass
Grid like gingham lines, rows and rows to write to place down
a picnic blanket scatters sun-hat orange onto the stalls

the fair sits where sea and city meet, where marine meets pleated glitter
the paper is warm like condensed breath, the special warm of specificity
Following the edges of a poster framed and stretched tough as corduroy, has its symmetry in an empty billboard, the patchwork rust having its symmetry in a metallic grey forest.

Publishing stack upon stack of marmalade, making public an advertisement turns artwork turns archive

You are asked:
Please if you wouldn’t mind, could you fill out this brief survey, to tell us how you found out about this event?

I found out through the lapis brows, the flickering lids behind rows of page-turners
Through the subtext that reads bougainvillaea in its intruding glory

Been adjacent to as red-freckled is to strawberry trickle, the clock twitches to point to each of us, asks us to describe

And cheeks raised in a library’s glee, turning from punch to ballet slipper to hot pink
My single plan splinters into aureolin, a burst of plans, a gentle nudge in time-travel, a slice of unintention. where hundreds of posters scatter

Town in miniature, on ground

This poem moves through the feelings, movements, and thoughts of someone who imagines being at the International Feminist Book Fair in Barcelona, in 1991. The voice of the poem reacts to the ‘experience’ of seeing the poster promoting the event, and being in a fair outside of their sense of time and space.

To contextualise the poster, it represents a series of international feminist book fairs, beginning in London in 1984, then Oslo in 1986, Montreal in 1988, Barcelona in 1990, and Amsterdam in 1992. Parallel to the first fair in London, Feminist Book Fortnight (FBF) started running, which was a British book trade event, and these events marked the beginning of widespread interest in ‘feminist’ themes from policy to literature. The increased popularity of feminist publishing at this time, with speakers such as Maya Angelou and Nawal El Saadawi invited to present, book signings, readings, and public library engagement, resulted in a greater mainstreaming of feminist issues and interests. There is no precise detail for who made the poster for the Barcelona fair, but it seems to be a collaboration between Barcelona City Council (Ajuntament de Barcelona), the government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya), the Ministry of Culture (Ministerio de Cultura), the National Women’s Institute (Instituto de la Mujer), and the National Employment Institute (Instituto Nacional de Empleo).

Bio

Anita Slater is a writer and researcher interested in poetry, pedagogy and zines. She has just started doctoral research through the Leverhulme Trust LUDeC programme at Manchester Metropolitan University.

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