Lindsay/Ivor Cutler, 9. A Life on the Page

Although he’s now best known as a performer and recording artist, Ivor Cutler was also a successful author, writing books and poems for children and adults and featuring in poetry anthologies. His life as an author is often seen as secondary to his fame as a performer and recording artist and his books are mostly out of print, but they have their own charms. This chapter will discuss Ivor’s work as an author for adults and children and his collaborations with illustrators including Martin Honeysett and Alfie Benge. It also looks at his work as a poet, from his earliest attempts to write poetry, to his appearances in leading poetry journals and his books of poems and short stories. It will also explore his use of “stickies,” the small sticky labels printed with his own thoughts or those of others, which Ivor used to inform, cheer and confuse people he met in his day-to-day life.