MONOTYPES | BLUE CLERK
Monotypes printed with Josephine Press, Santa Monica, in July 2021 over drawings on washi, made with graphite and vintage vinyl letter decals.
Each print evokes a line from Dionne Brand's The Blue Clerk: Ars Poetica in 59 Versos (2018). On an ocean wharf a clerk clad in ink-blue inspects bales of paper, which comprise the poet’s accumulated left-hand pages.
DB ...The Blue Clerk came out of that, this archive of what the author cannot say. The blue clerk wants to make a different language.
SH The clerk is an unconscious recording surface marked by particular histories and the guardian of the archive. The Blue Clerk provides a history of the book, as it raises the question, What is the book? It is an excoriating and humorous view of the author as a totally compromised figure, an indulgent persona with the inclination to wax poetically and philosophically.
DB Yes. The author is totally compromised. She gets shut down by the clerk. (laughter)
Dionne Brand interview with Saidiya Hartman in BOMB, autumn 2024