the poets, scratching away with dip-pens on a surface pitted with microscopic bumps and hollows, found themselves writing with unfamiliar or half-forgotten implements on a material light years away from bleached, flat paper. the whole skin was used in each case, resulting in a book half as big as the book of kells again. indeed, the sense of time on the project often induced near-vertigo, as the evolving community of makers rediscovered age-old techniques as well as an unexpected sense of a long-buried continuity.