Arrows of Desire by Nick Job

https://the-modernist.org/collections/books

At some point shortly after Rail Express Systems had been sold and become part EWS I acquired a copy of their Design Manual, and it was an epiphany when this kid that liked trains saw clearly the beauty of good design, especially when applied across an entire corporate identity.

In the era of privatisation the many examples of poor liveries and branding on the railway have taught us how much of an achievement the BR Corporate Identity really was – it was not an inevitability. We also see that in this “digital” age everyone can be their own graphic designer – central control of a corporate identity is harder and harder to maintain.

I was in two minds about whether I should get this book, owning a copy of the Facsimile of the Corporate Identity Manual, that Nick Job had a hand in bringing to publication, and original ring-binder volumes of the same, plus more than one book on BR’s design history.

But no regrets in getting my sister to give it to me as Christmas present – the focus in on the Double Arrow, its use and abuse not only by BR but as the ongoing symbol of the railway in this country.

Nick shares his knowledge with a wit that would draw in even those (peculiar people) not already obsessed by trains and / or mid-20th Century design.

He She They Us edited by Charlie Castelletti

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers 

This is a greatest hits collection of Queer Poems, printed in generous print allowing the poems to breathe on the page.

Lots of familiar names in the collection, indeed a decent number of poems I have read elsewhere, by that Fourteen Poems or poets on pamphlets and collections.

A lot of tags in this, including…

A Room of Firsts and Skin Tags by Karl Knights

Invisible Boy by Matthew Haigh

Girl Guides by Jo Morris Dixon

Words and Music by Colette Bryce

The Moon is Trans by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

An ode to trans bodies by Cal Brantley

On the Run by Nicoletta Poungias

Queer Magic by Theo Parish

Not Quite Yet by Chloe Smith

The Law Concerning Mermaids by Kei Miller

We Are Librarian by So Mayer Briefly, there were books by Jessica Verdi

Here Be by Harry Josephine Giles

Pride by Travis Alabanza

The Unstill Ones by Miller Oberman

These play with myth – which is very much what I am into at the moment – I felt that the collection built on itself. It wasn’t a single poem that got to you but the growing sense of the body of work.

I liked that it took English myth as a starting point – something that has often been sidelined.