An imprint of The Paeon Press
Larger-format art books, in which writing and original artwork share the page.
The Imprint
Poiesis Books is the illustrated imprint of The Paeon Press. Where the parent list is devoted to fiction, Poiesis publishes larger-format volumes in which an artist and a writer work together from the outset, and in which the pictures are given room to think.
Each title is designed as an object: generous format, heavy stock, drawings reproduced as drawings rather than as decoration. The list is deliberately short, and every book in it is meant to be kept.
Forthcoming
Sorry About the Mess
A short and irreverent history of London’s buildings
Paul Lancaster · Martin Travis
London has been built, demolished, rebuilt and improved upon for two thousand years, frequently by people convinced that their predecessors had got it wrong.
From Roman bathhouses and medieval churches to Georgian terraces, Victorian railway stations and modern skyscrapers, Martin Travis takes an affectionate but distinctly irreverent look at the buildings that have shaped the capital. Along the way, he encounters the ambitions of monarchs, the vanity of architects, the aspirations of the middle classes and the persistent determination of Londoners to make an impression.
Accompanied by Paul Lancaster’s witty pen-and-watercolour illustrations, London: A Question of Taste is a lively architectural history concerned as much with the people responsible for London’s buildings as with the buildings themselves.
An entertaining reminder that architecture is rarely just about architecture.
- Imprint
- Poiesis Books · No. 1
- Format
- A5 portrait paperback · 48–52 pages
- Structure
- Illustration facing essay
- Illustrations
- Paul Lancaster
- Text
- Martin Travis
- Status
- Forthcoming
Advance praise
“An architectural history with its tongue firmly in its cheek.”
The Metropolitan Review
“David Lodge meets Nikolaus Pevsner, with amusing consequences.”
The Bloomsbury Quarterly
“Elegant, mischievous and admirably resistant to architectural solemnity.”
The Cultural Review
“Paul Lancaster’s drawings are worth the price of admission. The words are an unexpected bonus.”
The Illustrated Chronicle
Two houses, one standard of care.
Paeon Press publishes literary fiction and crime. Poiesis Books publishes the art books that grow out of it, with the same small list and the same attention to the object in hand.