A series of images based on selected pages from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Included in the ‘Bloomsday’ Exhibition at the Context Gallery, Derry, (2003).

These images are derived from the wonderfully arrogant daydream of Stephen Dedalus on Sandymount Strand,

remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep,

        copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world,

        including Alexandria?       

In my reading of Ulysses I have also been intrigued by Stephen’s brief deliberation on his alphabet books, his notion of creating the ultimate distillation of text,

Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his

        F? O yes, but I prefer his Q. Yes, but his W is wonderful. O yes W.

My work attempts to further distil this notion. Some may regard the results as sacrilegious deletions, but I know it to be a wordless homage, visualising the unimaginable, a world without Joyce!