‘I am for adjectives like beezer, dreich, quare, and nouns like clart, drouth, gleed, mizzle, oxters, scoot-hole, smoor, and verbs like boke, fissle, greet, hunker, swither, and adverbs like furnenst. I am for non-standard English language as a legitimate and enriching form of critical and creative writing which does not take modalities of criticality as given, rather it tends to, and experiments with non-division between practice and theory, criticism and creativity.’ Maria Fusco

Dialecty is a new project conceived by writer Maria Fusco, and developed with The Common Guild, considering the embodiment and uses of vernacular forms of speaking and writing, exploring how dialect words, syntax and language question traditional orthodoxies of critical writing in creative form.

As part of the project, Fusco will commission six new solo-authored chapbooks drawn from open submission and invitation, which will be co-published by Book Works and The Common Guild throughout 2018. Lisa Robertson has been invited to write the first book in this series, and will write around the construction of vernacular voice amidst the abolishment of a lyric culture, stating:

‘I think the voice is the great Baroque pearl of this catastrophe that is the political human dump.’

The Common Guild together with Book Works, as part of Co-series, are offering four new commissions selected from open submission and two invited commissions. These sole-authored publications will be aligned with the main themes of Fusco’s project Dialecty: we are interested in proposals that are written in dialect, doggerel, intra-lingual and vernacular, or in proposals that reflect on these subject areas. All forms: critical, cross-genre, experimental, new narrative etc. are welcome.

Commissions will be selected by Maria Fusco, with Book Works and The Common Guild, with a fee of £250 plus 50 copies of the book payable to selected artists/writers.

For more information please download the information and application process attached.