105 x 150mm, 70 pages, Risograph printed, Saddle stitched, Softcover, Includes 10 double sided postcards, 2023

A pamphlet made in response to the folk song 'The Blacksmith'.

'A blacksmith courted me, nine months and better.
He fairly won my heart, he wrote me a letter.
With his hammer in his hand he looked so clever
And if I were with my love I would live forever.'

By Edwina Attlee, Rey Conquer, Grace Connolly Linden, George Meadows, Lilí Ní Dhomhnaill and George Townsend.

Made in response to the song and the meanings we can put in it: from the untrueness of ‘true’ love, to a young offender’s institution at Hollesley Bay, the miraculous horse-shoeing of St Eloi and the Baroque poetry of Sibylla Schwartz.

As a project, The Blacksmith tried to follow the pattern set by the blacksmith’s swage block: a tool wrought for shaping other tools. That is, in one sense at least, listening to the song for the absences it shapes and contains.

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