Monthly Archives: May 2014

Join our new Bloomsday project to bring James Joyce’s Ulysses to life in the ‘selfie’ age. Re-imagine the heart and soul and humor of Joyce’s epic everyman novel with the help of whatever photo-taking device you have at your fingertips. Then share your vision online with the world on June 16 for Bloomsday.

Your challenge is to take a line or passage from the book and create a photo that brings it to life in the world we live in today. There is no shortage of inspirations to chose from in Joyce’s encyclopedia odyssey of our human condition – see a few samples listed below.

Use the photographic muse to break the novel free of the confines of time (1904) and place (Dublin, Ireland) and show the tale anew. Bring forth something you really like in Ulysses and be as daring, poetic, joyful and/or silly as you like to express it with photos. We encourage you to emphasize the human in your photos to match the profusion of humanity stuffed into the book.

HERE’S HOW

Once you’ve taken your photo (plain, fancy, or PhotoShopped), post it along with the Ulysses line that inspired it to your favorite social media channel on Monday, June 16, with the hashtag #Ulyssespic. We will actively promote that hashtag leading up to Bloomsday and will retweet/share pics we really like on @UlyssesLives and Liberate Ulysses (Facebook). Note that Edwardian dress and obvious Irish references are not required.

NO WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

If you’re feeling particularly proud of your work, submit your photo(s) to us for our Bloomsday 2014 #Ulyssespic Competition. Just drop your pic(s) and the Ulysses line(s) in the email to [email protected] before June 15. On Bloomsday we’ll post all suitable entries in an image gallery on this website for the world to enjoy. AND we’ll pick one photo that we feel best evokes the spirit of Ulysses to receive a Grand Joycean Prize of one colorful letterpress-printed broadside of your choice from The Works of Master Poldy (The Salvage Press, Dublin) suitable for framing.

FOR STARTERS a few lines from Ulysses to get you going:

Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather

Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume.

Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky gumjelly lips.

Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured hoardings.

Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound.

Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk of the red flower between his smiling teeth

Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write a message for her.

I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing

Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit.

Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland’s hearts and hands.

Mr Malachi Mulligan resolved to purchase Lambay island and set up there a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt

Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings.

Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints, silk, dames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses

His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab. Beauty: it curves, curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires.

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire?

To catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly, behind her moving hams.

Buck Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over its smoking pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily.

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here

Gerty MacDowell was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away.

The boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the black open space. A mound of damp clods rose.

Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He is a finished example of the new womanly man. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence.

Your favorite passages not here? Let us know about it in a comment on this post or via @UlyssesLives and we’ll add it pronto!

 

(Another of the 12 shades of Leopold Bloom illustrated in The Works of Master Poldy from The Salvage Press, excerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses.)

he sees not only the injustice of political prejudice – I belong to a race too that is hated and persecuted – in his dust up with the citizen – It’s no use. Force, hatred, history, all that – he sees the everyday separation we have between ourselves and others who are different – Why we think a deformed person clever if he says something we might say – and acknowledges the reality of cruelty in the natural world, watching his cat – Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal – Bloom takes in the full 360 of human life and strife and the struggle we face living together with others

To see more Master Poldy, visit: http://ow.ly/vXfRo

To purchase Master Poldy online, visit: http://ow.ly/vXg8a

 

a mad mix of machines and melodies – Almost human the way it sllt to call attention – Bloom’s imagination soars – Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters – as he reflects on the sounds in his life – cows lowing, the cattle market, cocks, snakes hissss – the sounds of his wife – Chamber music. I often thought when she. Tinkling – the joy and feeling behind those common singing sounds – Yes joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you are – even the dumb door – Doing its level best to speak – wonderful that he notices and tells us – There’s music everywhere.

Another of the 12 shades of Mr Leopold Bloom depicted in glorious letterpress in “The Works of Master Poldy,” rendered by The Salvage Press (Dublin 2013).

To see more of The Works of Master Poldy, visit: http://ow.ly/vXfRo

To buy The Works of Master Poldy online, visit: http://ow.ly/vXg8a

WIN a FREE limited edition of the letterpress lovely The Works of Master Poldy (The Salvage Press, Dublin, 2013) — Molly Bloom’s tribute to her husband Leopold as imagined in James Joyce’s ULYSSES.

Just SHARE our posts on Twitter (@UlyssesLives) or Facebook (LiberateUlysses) this month and VOILA you are entered in the drawing to take Master Poldy home with you. The winner will be announced on June 1.

Can you think of a better way to celebrate Bloomsday 2014 and James Joyce’s Ulysses?

Sneak peek at ‘Master Poldy’ - http://ow.ly/vXfRo

Purchase ‘Poldy’ online - http://ow.ly/vXg8a

The boy at the gravehead held his wreath with both hands

– death weighs on Bloom throughout Ulysses – staring quietly in the black open space – both at Dignam’s funeral and in his stifled memories of his dead son Rudy, but he is also amazingly matter-of-fact – Once you are dead you are dead – practical – It’s the blood sinking in the earth gives new life – and humorous – Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job – when it comes to death, his attitude triumphant over death – Read your own obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.

(Another of the 12 shades of Mr Leopold Bloom depicted in glorious letterpress in The Works of Master Poldy, rendered by The Salvage Press, Dublin, in 2013; from Ulysses by James Joyce)

To see more of The Works of Master Poldy, visit: http://ow.ly/vXfRo

To buy The Works of Master Poldy online, visit: http://ow.ly/vXg8a

 

(The next of the 12 shades of Mr Leopold Bloom depicted in letterpress type in The Works of Master Poldy from The Salvage Press, Dublin, and yours truly.)

I love and Bloom loved the bright bold blaring world of words printed BIG on paper, that catch the eye and put out there whatever it is you want to put into people’s brains – Elijah is coming – including your own philosophy of life – the new nine muses: Commerce, Amor, Publicity – and the secret that the ad man knows that – For an advertisement you must have repetition – which cagey Bloom recognizes is the same trick the Catholic Church – Pray for us. And pray for us. And pray for us. – has used for centuries to build its flock, this page of #MasterPoldy celebrates Bloom the Apostle of the Printed Word – Buy from us. And buy from us. – (an affinity shared by his wife).

To see more of The Works of Master Poldy, visit: http://ow.ly/vXfRo

To buy The Works of Master Poldy online, visit: http://ow.ly/vXg8a

Original letterpress design of excerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

 

There are 12 shades of Mr Leopold Bloom in The Works of Master Poldy, as rendered by The Salvage Press, Dublin (and yours truly) in glorious letterpress printing. This post shows you the first; the rest will follow by Bloomsday 2014.

One of Bloom’s several reflections on love in Ulysses, this in the intimate confines of his bedroom as Molly slowly rises from sleep – she set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly – he fondly recalling her and his youth – Wish I had a full length oil-painting of her then – as she eagerly awaits the day before her – Who are the letters for? – he is torn between desire for her – the warmth of her couched body rose – and resignation to time changing that attraction to something else – We are their harps. I. He. Old. Young. – which he is powerless to prevent – Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. – the ever-practical problem solver of Bloom’s mind eventually rising to the challenge – What to do with our wives.

To see more of The Works of Master Poldy, visit: http://ow.ly/vXfRo

To buy The Works of Master Poldy online, visit: http://ow.ly/vXg8a