Portable Reading Room has long since departed Crescent Arts. Despite its absence, the space continues to resonate. Here is my tribute to it.

The Portable Reading Room (PRR) is a wooden construction made for people to enter into to read, perform and enjoy text acting as a mobile bookshop, gallery and project space. PRR is an easily assembled flat-pack vessel cum social structure.

The PRR is a vessel for ideas; it serves as an arena for conversation and participation: blurring disticnctions between Liturature, Writing and Art.

The PRR offers an intoxicationg array of books for thirsty readers. On its shelves can be found publications by Wild Pansy Press (WPP), which specialize in artist books. WPP was founded by Chris Taylor and Adrian Rifkin in 1995 and is a collective art practice and small publishing house based in the School of Fine Art at Leeds University.

PRR and WPP work collectively to encourage experimental and creative writing and reading. The structure can be used as a stage and platform for oration. Performances lend themselves well to this contained and informal ‘open’ social activity. Audiences are invited to read their own works.

The PRR has sturdy diner-esque stools, wipe clean surfaces and a menu: think and drink without pretence or ego. PRR can exist in your mind – and if you didn’t ‘get it” whilst housed temporarily in it, PRR nudges your equilibrium like the crest of a refreshing, isolated wave.

http://www.wildpansypress.com/http://www.wildpansypress.com/