There is, for every work,
an infinite number of possible variants.

—MAURICE BLANCHOT
Thomas the Obscure

An original Greenboathouse initiative, Variant invited writers to respond in any form to a “trigger”; a passage from a book, poem, theoretical text (or billboard for that matter) was posted on-line to which writers were invited to respond in whatever direction they were drawn.

We were looking for innovative and unconventional responses to these quotes, and encouraged contributors to develop their submissions as directly or indirectly as they saw fit.

From the Variants submitted we posted a handful of selections on-line, one of which was produced as a limited edition broadsheet. Of those the author received 10% of the print run, all contributors whose work was posted on-line received a copy, and the rest went out as gratis gifts to our subscription list.

With any luck we'll get this ball rolling again in 2007, but for the moment thanks to everyone who sent in emails of support and encouragement for the Variant project.

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