What’s New?
NEW BOOKS
All My Love and Then Some
All My Love and Then Some: The Letters of Cpl. Polly G. Meilman RCAF (WD) to Her Parents, 1942-1944 is not one of my artist's books, but a just-published book of letters edited by my sister Margaret Melhorn. I didn't become a funny feminist artist all on my own—both my parents had a sense of humour, but my mother was particularly wacky. (It was she who chose Light and Flaky as the title of the memoir with recipes which I produced many years ago.) As the description on the Friesen Press website says: "Filled with Meilman's characteristic wit and humour, these letters provide a lively firsthand account of a young woman learning, adjusting and maturing during her service in the air force." More than eighty of the letters Polly wrote home were saved in a brown paper bag. Margaret has compiled and edited these letters and augmented them with insights into their historical and familial context.
To buy a copy, just click this link:
Friesen Press
The Knitters
On the Grain is the latest in a series of sewn books using poems about sewing as text. So far, there are five books with text by Lorna Crozier (see Button, Zipper, Needle, Ironing Board and Scissors on the LIST-sewing page,) four with poems by Hazel Hall (see Counterpanes, Heavy Threads, Mending, and Two Sewing,) one with a poem by Terry Ann Carter (see Zipper: A Suite,) one by Alexandra Cussons (see Sewing Pattern,) two by Diane Dawber (see Grandmother and Aunt,) one by Bronwen Wallace (see Like the Petit Point,) one by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (see I Sit and Sew) and one by Cindy Veach (see On the Grain).
I found P.K. Page's poem in one of my mother's books of poetry from the 1970s entitled Poems Selected and New, published by House of Anansi Press. The description of knitters was so intriguing, I just had to play with it. Page was not only an acclaimed Canadian poet, but a novelist, playwright, essayist, journalist and visual artist (as P.K. Irwin.) “Page is an almost entirely visual poet,” writes Canadian Literature essayist Rosemary Sullivan, although that abundance of visual images also brought negative criticism. "Each of Miss Page's stanzas is so crowded with new and exciting pictures, that ...[each] seems...to require the attention of a whole poem," John Sutherland commented in Northern Review.
See the LIST page, for more information. Click on the Poems about Sewing button.
Her poem is used with the permission of The Estate of P.K. Page [1974.]
2025, Kingston. (7 x 7 x 7" when closed. Opens t0 3' x 4'. ) Edition of 10. $1000
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