10 - Nude

Summer 2007

PRINT EDITION: Sold out

Original blurb:

Nude, Fuselit's 10th issue, is divided into four sections: a booklet of poetry, a booklet of art, a booklet of short prose and a CD, all of which come in a hand-made voile pouch with a pink ribbon. On the CD, there's performance poetry, folk pop, and a song made entirely out of porn samples. We've also got a cut out and keep Rimbaud doll, poetry on stick insects and Las Vegas weddings, and, of course, nudes and semi-nudes galore.

Nude saw us getting a little more ambitious. Splitting poetry, prose, artwork and music into four components (three booklets and the CD), we pondered on how to keep them together, and some fool hit upon the idea of sewing a lingerie-style bag in which to keep them. This saw me swearing over a cheap sewing machine in my tiny bedroom. But they did get made, and, as rough as they were, the bags, drawn with purple ribbon, didn’t look too shabby. Unsurprisingly, this was our most sensual keyword yet, prompting a good deal of raunchy material, but also some unusual ideas of stripping and breaking down. Bek Galloway’s poem ‘Night Rates’ was great, and how about this from Claire Wheeler?

“My love for you is round and inescapable … I will be carrying it everywhere now. / Like a schoolboy with his football.”

I think my favourite aspect of Nude was that each cover had a piece of flash fiction on it, continued over to the back cover, each starting with one of the first three letters of 'nude'. It was also the first issue of Fuselit for which we were able to have a launch event, as we still hadn't really tapped into a large local poetry audience. We ended up heading up to Edinburgh to launch it at The Forest, who also gave us a grant to buy a decent printer. Our printer troubles, alas, have continued to this day.