Joke Book
Book Title: Joke Book
Authors: Tessa Berring
ISBN: 978-1-7391634-3-3
Page Count: 68
GSM: 150
Trim: 105 mm x 148 mm
Price: £10.00
Publish Date: 06 January 2025
ORDERS MADE BEFORE 06 JANUARY 2025 WILL SHIP FIRST CLASS FROM THE UK ON THAT DATE.
Joke Book is an expression of Berring’s love of the joke form as a miniature conversation or unfamiliar exchange. Momentary pieces of theatre, a joke can turn language over and onto its side, revealing both the lightness of a word and the unfixed nature of meaning.
Book Title: Joke Book
Authors: Tessa Berring
ISBN: 978-1-7391634-3-3
Page Count: 68
GSM: 150
Trim: 105 mm x 148 mm
Price: £10.00
Publish Date: 06 January 2025
ORDERS MADE BEFORE 06 JANUARY 2025 WILL SHIP FIRST CLASS FROM THE UK ON THAT DATE.
Joke Book is an expression of Berring’s love of the joke form as a miniature conversation or unfamiliar exchange. Momentary pieces of theatre, a joke can turn language over and onto its side, revealing both the lightness of a word and the unfixed nature of meaning.
Book Title: Joke Book
Authors: Tessa Berring
ISBN: 978-1-7391634-3-3
Page Count: 68
GSM: 150
Trim: 105 mm x 148 mm
Price: £10.00
Publish Date: 06 January 2025
ORDERS MADE BEFORE 06 JANUARY 2025 WILL SHIP FIRST CLASS FROM THE UK ON THAT DATE.
Joke Book is an expression of Berring’s love of the joke form as a miniature conversation or unfamiliar exchange. Momentary pieces of theatre, a joke can turn language over and onto its side, revealing both the lightness of a word and the unfixed nature of meaning.
Description
About the book
Joke Book is a tender tribute to thought. Deeply human, it plays on Berring's magnificent ability to craft lean, dense phrases that suddenly crack wide open, giving a slant glimpse into the 'multitudinal oddnesses' that make up the speeches of daily life. The beauty of joke book is its intimacy, an unknown joke partner slipping in and out of visibility. At times we feel the joke is with the author, at others, we feel the distinct presence of a child, a lover. Someone asks, then there is a reply, or there is a thought. Berring writes with a clarity that dives under the skin, questioning deep belief while maintaining a lightness of touch and tone. “What is the difference between panic and placards?”“Language”, she notes “knows when it is time to escape”. The conversational form draws us into a day in which we feel jokes are the designated theme, the structure of thought. Slips are allowed, even celebrated, and we see the underlying joke in the room. When language ends we laugh, suggests Berring, but she leaves us wanting more.
-Amy Todman
Joke Book moves swiftly between mischief and melancholy. The energy of wild things – the sea, crocuses, long grass, insects – is allowed to come inside through an open skylight into a colourful world of plasticine, linoleum, soup making and blouses, where voices play and tease. Berring's joke-poems enact questions with the curiosity and uncanny wisdom of children, seeking the excitement of riddles and defiant answers. Her rich emotional world rises timidly but splendidly like the fluttering of a bird’s wings.
- Helena Fornells Nadal
This collection of jokes, or ‘non-jokes’ is a glimpse into all the digressions, asides, trains and traces of thought and distractions that make up a life. There is delicate beauty in the ennui and melancholy of these poems, which illustrate the universe’s refusal to provide neat answers or single meanings. Berring offers surreal imagery and formal play with nature and the domestic - a deadpan flipping and folding of sadness into the joke form, but with an amusement at doing so. Reminiscent of Daniil Kharms’ absurdist miniatures, Joke Book sharply mocks assumptions around what we are supposed to know about life and how to live it.
- Vik Shirley
