Jiří Valoch – White Sheets (1964–1966)

Visual artist Jiří Valoch’s book of experimental poetry White Sheets (Bílé listy) was originally compiled for publication by the Brno publishing house Blok in 1968. The publication of the book was halted, however, by the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the subsequent period of “normalization” in the late 60s and early 70s. A copy of the manuscript was preserved in the archive of the artist J. H. Kocman, a friend of Valoch's for many years.

It is not being produced as a facsimile, but reset. The layout respects to the maximum the author's arrangement of the text, especially in places where it constituted a carrier of the meaning of the poetry. The manuscript is being published in its original wording and has not been subjected to any new revisions by the author or other editorial interventions.It is accompanied by a theoretical essay by Jan Pavlík (a pseudonym of Jiří Valoch), first published in English (translated by Gerta Pospíšilová, director of the Brno House of Art and Jiří Valoch's lifelong partner) in 1975 by the Italian publishing house of Benjamin Carrucci as the foreword to Valoch's first monograph Poesia Visiva

Although the work is being published after an incredible lapse of 47 years, it is not as a critical edition of archival sources, but as the "living" work of a living author.