About Menopausal Bedtime Rhymes
Menopausal Bedtime Rhymes (Boutree, 2006) won the recently announced Callum Macdonald Memorial Award.
Maureen says:
'My aim was to create a blend of words and images within a pamphlet.
The challenge I set myself was to have the menopause as the thematic thread to the poetry collection and further to describe honestly the moods and experiences of different women going through ‘that time of life’ while allowing my own voice to sound through the poetry.
A very important aim was for the collection to say to women of a certain age ‘You’re not alone’ and to stress a sense of community, hence why I, as poet/publisher, raised money to pay for the printing through subscription and sponsorship from local businesses.
An aim was to produce chuckles and mirror yearnings and to have something of the appeal of the fairytale in its content and design so that it would not only be bought by menopausal women. The collection was to be about change and metamorphosis and to have a much broader readership appeal.
The collection also aimed to take a different angle to the usual medicalisation of the menopause in its positive use of ‘lunatic’ symbolism.
The aesthetic choices made in creating this pamphlet were:
The vision from the outset was to depart from the characteristic A5 format and to achieve a distinctive look. An atypical format was chosen, the roughly square shape making the pamphlet an appealing, handy companion. Incorporating my art with my poetry, along with the atypical format, would also deliver a special quality to the pamphlet.
The layout when opened had to give a horizontal spread allowing for poems to be set far apart on opposite pages and to maximize the use of white space. This was so that words could expand into that space, the reader, thereby, getting a sense of an emotional journey occurring between the inside covers of the ‘skinny’ moon and the ‘full moon’, (this symbolism alluding to the menstrual cycle now past) The layout also allowed excellent integration of the illustrations with the poems.
White, rather than coloured paper was chosen for the inside to give value to the graphic quality of the illustrations. The rich red and purple of the cover was chosen to suggest a sensuous female potentiality being born, supported by the moonlight becoming the white lettering of the title.' |