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Background to Rebels and Friends:

Poems from the Play

In 1992 work was begun on printing a collection of those of Eva Gore-Booth's poems used in Rebels and Friends under the title Poems from the Play. This collection has now been completed under the new title Poems By Eva Gore-Booth.

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The poems have been set in 12pt Bembo and printed by hand on Glastonbury Antique laid paper by William Alderson at the Chandler Press, with a commercially printed wrap-around cover using a photograph of Strandhill in Sligo.

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Cover front.jpg

The poems included are:

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  • Dedication to the Death of Fionavar

  • Clouds

  • The Land to the Landlord

  • Women's Rights

  • The street Corner Orator

  • To C.A.

  • Roger Casement

  • Survival

  • Comrades

  • Christmas Eve in Prison

  • The Triumph of Maeve

  • Excerpts from the play The Triumph of Maeve

  • The Travellers

  • After the Storm


together with notes on Eva Gore-Booth and Lynx Theatre and Poetry.

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The poems are taken from the following collections of Eva's poetry and a play she wrote and illustrated:

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  • Death of Fionavar

  • Poems of Eva Gore-Booth

  • The One and the Many

  • The Egyptian Pillar

  • Broken Glory

  • The Three Resurrections

  • The Triumph of Maeve

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A letterpress edition of 'The Street Corner Orator' by Eva Gore-Booth, designed, set and printed by hand by William Alderson. Design © William Alderson 1991.
The Street Corner Orator ...

An A4 display edition of Eva's The Street Corner Orator, shown here, is also available.

 

William based his design for the border on a architectural feature

he observed in the area described in the poem. This combined a rectangular frontage with a semicircular feature with the whole topped by a dome. Rendering this in printer's fleurons was a challenge, since at one point in the design there are four simultaneous curves which have to be accommodated.

 

William followed the route of this poem by bicycle in the summer of 1988. During this time, he not only photographed the towns and scenery mentioned, but also researched and copied archive slides and photographs of women who worked in the cotton mills of that area at the start of the twentieth century. Copies of a couple of tinted glass slides are among those used in Rebels and Friends.

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Ironically, it only rained at Ashton-under-Lyme, the very same place at which it rained in Eva's poem:

      At Ashton Town the rain came down,

     The east wind pierced us through and through ...

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