What is a
chapbook?
A chapbook is a small, hand-held booklet — typically eight to twenty-four pages — containing poetry, stories, folklore, or observations about the world. Intimate by nature and made to be carried, passed along, and read more than once.
Okay, and now let me put my "history-nerd" hat on.....
A (very) Brief History
Chapbooks showed up in 16th century Europe as one of the earliest forms of popular print, and honestly, they were kind of radical. Traveling merchants called chapmen (from the Old English ceap, meaning trade) carried them town to town, putting literature directly into the hands of ordinary people instead of leaving it to collect dust in the libraries of people who already had everything. Woodcut illustrations were a hallmark of the form: bold, graphic, immediate. The content ranged from ballads and folk tales to local gossip and moral verse. They were the "dispatches" of their day. *wink, wink*
Small, printed records of the world as people were actually living it.
Why I call what I make one?
The chapbook has always been about directness. One voice, one place, a handful of pages, made to travel. Which is to say: it was always going to end up here. Each month I sit down in Iceland and fill twelve pages with what I am seeing, thinking, and making: original illustrations that nod to that same woodcut tradition, field notes, cultural stories, and the very specific light of the North Atlantic. Then I put it in an envelope and mail it to you.
A chapbook from the edge of the world,
working exactly the way chapbooks always have.
Hand to hand.
Place to place.