radiant fracture

The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts takes place at Rockwood Centre, which is a beautiful camp-like space right in the town of Sechelt, behind the library and not five minutes from the water.

The site is steeply sloped, which makes it awkward in terms of accessibility, though mom didn't have much trouble on her braces. She's way more mobile since the knee surgery, and she has noticeably more energy. I almost cried when she talked about last year, when she had a lot less control and her fatigue was worse. She said she was terrified going up and down the hill, and that the bathrooms were really difficult. But she did it anyway, several times. That's my mom. Absolutely stubborn if she wants to do something.

The hall uses the natural slope of the site to create its stadium seating. It has a lower and an upper entrance. The food kiosks were along the path to the upper entrance, and then on the level above that was the book tent.

There were several tables in the tent -- one for festival merch, one for the authors' books, one for local self-published authors, and one for the Alcuin society.

They're a typography and book arts society. I'd never heard of them. They seem like a peculiar mix -- almost unworldly. The generation before digital took off, and not really at ease with its possibilties -- happier with the stern requirements of earlier technologies.

The table was full of pamphlets and a few limited-edition books for sale, and this is the only evidence for my deductions. The layouts were clean but not striking, and some of the merchandise was water- or age-damaged. Given that, the prices seemed surprisingly high to me -- maybe that's what limited-edition is like, but there were flyers or folders for $15 and $25. They use some digital typesetting. I'm not sure about the printing -- they don't do it themselves anymore, and I think at least some of it was digital. Though apparently you can still find letterpress printers in Vancouver, which, how cool is that?

It's not that I don't believe their costsand effort made the pricing logical; it's just that as a zine-maker, used to putting in dozens of hours and scraping together money to produce something you'll sell ten copies of for $2 apiece, it was odd to see a three-fold brochure (vintage? letterpress?) valued so highly.

I was browsing politely, wondering what I was missing, when I came across:

Shovels, shoes and the slow rotation of letters: a feuilleton in honour of John Dreyfus
Compiled by Robert Bringhurst and produced for the Alcuin Society

"Bringhurst!" I crowed. And that did it. We were away. I bought the pamphlet (4 pages of nice 8-1/2 x 11 laid, staple-bound, not sure of print method (no noticeable type impression), circa 1986 but it could have been a reprint -- $15.) We gossiped Bringhurst. They gave me one of the member posters, an information pamphlet (offset) and three catalogues from the annual book design awards they give -- which I was also unaware of (shame). So that my free swag more than compensated for any sentimental Bringhurst-induced expenses.

I'm considering joining. They seem eccentric. And who else is going to send you a poster of a sonnet as a members' incentive?

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