A State of Writing community

In May this year, the State Library of Queensland welcomed Chris Meade, Director of London’s Institute for the Future of the Book (if: book) to The Edge for a three-day Residency.

if: book is a small think and do tank based in London which explores the potential of new media for readers, writers and publishers.

While he was here, Chris ran a free workshop at The Edge called If All the Sea Was Ink which focused on what publishing is and could be in the digital age. He also collaborated with one of The Edge’s Residents, Jason Nelson, who is a digital poet and net artist.

Over at The Edge’s website, you can watch a video of Chris and Jason talking about their project which resulted in what they called an interactive multidimensional poetry cube.

Seriously.

A bit about Chris’s background: for five years he was Director of Booktrust, a UK reading promotion charity which promotes sthe discovery and enjoyment of reading through competitions and websites. Before that he was Director of the Poetry Society where he set up the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden and the lottery funded Poetry Places project which ran residencies for poets in community settings. In the 1980s he pioneered reader development, promoting public libraries as ‘imagination services’.