Friday, January 28, 2011

The 100 Volume, 10000 Page, 2 Foot Thick Book of Poetry


Where does it reside? In Iowa.

From an article in the Press-Citizen...

The book, "Poetry City Marathon," written by Iowa City poet Dave Morice of Dr. Alphabet fame, is the culmination of a 100-day poetry marathon this summer.

From July to October, Morice wrote 100 pages of poetry daily as part of a UI Main Library exhibit about the history of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Actualist Poetry Movement and the celebration of Iowa City being named a UNESCO City of Literature.

The final product is 10,119 pages, which was bound in a single volume by Bill Voss of the UI Libraries Preservation Department.

It is the largest-ever binding project undertaken by the department, department head Nancy Kraft said.

"Sometimes, if we're going to try something unusual, we'll do a mockup or tests and sometimes you have to redo it, but on a project this large, we just had to research and just plunge in and do it, and there was no looking back," she said.

Although a 200-page book takes only a few hours to bind, she said, "Poetry City Marathon" took 24 hours spread over four days, with a half-day devoted solely to making a special press to put the pages together. The book was assembled in smaller units and then bound together with the special press.