Buttercup Festival

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 14:51:08 -0700

23 August 2010
The Edinburgh Review recently carried a review of Parsimony, in which A.C. Clarke makes some very generous remarks:

These are spare, sharply focused poems written with great assurance and control and an often miraculous clarity, such intent observation that they seem, in Lamb�s phrase, to resolve themselves into the element which they contemplate, an immersion made explicit in the title poem, �so true I can�t tell/ whether I or the wind speaks it�. All the senses are on the alert: we smell �the barn�s mousy, pigeony dark�, hear �each bird singing konk-la-ree�, feel �the first/ fat plops of rain� and the heather �poor as a mattress/ for walking� under our feet.

More is going on than responses to landscape. Or rather, these responses are shaped by underlying tensions, recurring themes of intimacy and unease, the narrative of a relationship, alluded to, never fully explained. The �ratty hems� of willows and �a sky of cheap beer� reflect a period of depression. �The sound of hearing so little/ Of the true sound of this place� makes us aware of the limitations of human experience. Set against such perceptions are moments of intense happiness: �One gull/ sails/ through the morning � a bright flake of halo�, �this brown-smelling joy, scarcely to be believed.� This is a poet acutely, almost unbearably alive.

If you haven't bought a copy yet, I hope you'll consider it.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:54:09 -0700

16 August 2010
Another strip and maybe some other stuff will be up next Monday.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:41:24 -0700

26 July 2010
Hi everyone. The next update will be on Monday 16th of August, as I'm off to do a bit of camping and visiting. I'm going to take a sketchbook and pens and hope to have some drawings to share when I come back. Be well in the meantime.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:33:25 -0700

12 July 2010
Thank you to everyone who has already bought prints! You guys rock.

I forgot to mention, though, just in case anyone was confused, when I said all of the Series 2 strips are available as prints, what I really meant was all of the Series 2 strips except for the small pencilled ones, like this one. Those aren't available as prints -- unless you really want one, in which case I could re-scan it for you. I didn't save high-res scans of those, you see. But send me an email if you're interested in one.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:54:02 -0700

28 June 2010
Prints! Many of you have been asking for them and they�re finally here. All of the Series 2 strips are now available as high-quality prints from Topatoco. To order, just click the �buy this print� button beneath the strip you want, and you�ll be whisked away to the Topatoco website where the number and name should already be filled in for you. Then you just buy it. Heck, you know how the internet works.

I was walking through a field last night, just after dusk, and I saw a fox sniffing among the long ungathered mows of hay. It was just a fuzzy slur, the light was so low, but there was no mistaking the way it moved. A fox.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:35:49 -0700

21 June 2010
Hey everyone. How are you? Good, good.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 01:11:18 -0700

7 June 2010
A new comic for a new day.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Sun, 23 May 2010 18:35:41 -0700

24 May 2010
I�m reading Tess of the D�Urbervilles for the fourth time. Here�s a couple sentences I came across earlier today:

Dairyman Crick�s household of maids and men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural feeling and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough.

A few times in my life there have been spans of months where I think I approximated to this, when I was getting by with seasonal, live-in hotel work. And how true that now, making more money than I did then, I often feel that I don�t have enough.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 03 May 2010 05:18:59 -0700

3 May 2010
Day off! Walking!

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:30:51 -0700

26 April 2010
There are beautiful things going on out there.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:05:23 -0700

12 April 2010
Ah, warmer weather. Just the sort of weather for buying a t shirt and reclining in a greeny field with some poems.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 07:12:45 -0700

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:07:48 -0700

15 March 2010
I'm back, I'm back, and I'll try to make up for the quiet month with a few extra comics in coming weeks.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:48:41 -0800

25 February 2010
Hello hello. No new comic yet I'm afraid, but I wanted to announce that a launch reading for Parsimony has been arranged for Friday the 5th of March, from 6 to 7:30pm at Word Power Books in Edinburgh. I realize that this is a rather out of the way place for most of BF's readership, but if you are in the area please come along and say hi. There will be reading, and wine, and words, and power.

Buttercup Festival by David Troupes

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:24:47 -0800

25 January 2010
How is everyone? I'm ok.