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Newly co-published by Furtherfield and The Hyperliterature Exchange: an appreciation of David Daniels, the great shape-poet, who died in May 2008.

“Daniels is one of those figures who straddles the divide between digital and pre-digital art and literature… His art is about liberation, uninhibited outpouring, spontaneity and fun.”

To read the whole article, go to http://www.hyperex.co.uk/reviewdaniels.php .

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“Urizen is trapped by his own laws. He no longer truly believes in anything outside himself. His only way of relating to the outside world is either to fear it or to steal something from it. He has turned the infinite possibilities of the human heart into a little machine of self-interest. And because of that, his life is a life without hope.”

In search of Dora’s box, the children find their way right to the heart of Urizen’s headquarters, and discover something entirely different from what they were expecting.

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“The wind was blowing harder now, and the snow was coming down in thick flurries, which quickly turned the fronts of their clothes white and made it difficult either to see or hear; but Dora thought she heard a snatch of music. Then one of the little boys started jumping up and down and pointing. ‘Look! Look! They’re dancing! They’re dancing!’ Everyone looked where the little boy was pointing. On the far side of the snow-field, next to the fir trees, the snowmen and snow-women were moving.”

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“They landed in a huge circle of white dust, with a rim of sharp-looking rocks all the way round the outside. Everything was bathed in harsh colourless light, like moonlight but ten times as powerful. In the middle of the circle of rock was a massive square stone slab, and on the slab, flat on his back, lay a giant with his eyes closed.”

The children fly with some owls to the moon, where they meet the Queen of the Night and hear the story of Pandora and Prometheus. The seventh chapter of twelve.

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“The mouse did seem to be waiting: instead of scampering into the darkness it held itself almost completely still, except for small attentive movements of its ears and the constant trembling of its whiskers.”

On the run from Urizen’s henchmen, the children undertake a hazardous underground journey. At the bottom of a frozen cavern, they find out more about one of the clue cards.

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New on The Hyperliterature Exchange for May 2008: a review of ‘Le Reprobateur/The Reprover’ by Francois Coulon.

“Le Reprobateur… exudes selfconfidence, playfulness and humour; it attempts to do a lot of things at once, and by and large it succeeds in everything it attempts…”

To read the whole review, go to http://www.hyperex.co.uk/reviewreprobateur.php .

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“Urizen separated out a region from the rest of eternity, shrank it into solid matter, weighed it in his scales, measured it with his rods and plumblines, circumscribed it with his compasses, and wrote laws for it in his great brass-bound books. This sorry region, the region over which Urizen rules, is the universe in which we live…”

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“There are lots of faces like this in old churches – faces made out of leaves. Some of them are in wood and some in stone. They’re always called Green Men.”

“Why does this one look so horrible?”

“I believe they’re supposed to represent the plight of an immortal soul when it’s forced to live in a mortal body…”

Dora starts to find out about the first clue. She converses with a vicar. One of the cards is stolen. The black beetle reappears.

http://www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox/

- Edward Picot

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