Having been selected to be a “giver” for World Book Night on the 5th March, I decided to make my giving of 48 copies of “The World’s Wife”, by Carol Ann Duffy into a piece of performance art.
In applying to be a World Book Night giver, I was asked to state why I wanted to give out “The World’s Wife”.
I read the poems in “The Worlds Wife” and I thought that they were beautifully written, amusing, intelligent, easy to understand and relate to. I love the way that Carol Ann Duffy uses and subverts Feminine archetypes, in my work as a visual artist I also try to achieve this. I think that everyone should read “The Worlds Wife” because the voices of women speak loudly from its pages. Women from the past the present and the future.
I was also asked who I would like to give my copies too ?
I would like to give my copies to the main carers of young children that I meet whilst pushing my pram and baby around Todmorden. I would like to give the copies to carers at playgroups that I attend with my baby, users of Todmorden Sure Start Childrens Centre, and those that I meet whilst collecting my eldest son from his Primary School. I will distribute the books from the bottom of my Pram.
The performance involves taking on the persona of characters from the poems of the book. To date I have been “Little Red Cap”, “Frau Freud”, “Mrs Darwin”, “Queen Kong”, and “Mrs Midas”. These characters reveal parallel visual narrative’s of my life as a mother caring for my children in Todmorden. The Characters are visually documented through the daily Journeys that they have taken.
As a part of the giving process for World Book Night each recipient has been invited to have a portrait of their Hands taken. At the end of the performance there will be photographic documentation of the 48 hands of the 48 recipients of “The World’s Wife”. The idea behind these photographs was to capture the working hands of the carers of young children, to show the diversity of the recipients to record the humanity of reading.
The site contains contextual information about “The World’s Wife” including interviews with the author Carol Ann Duffy and also about World Book Night.