Collage of small black fine line tattoos drawn from classic books, shown on upper arms, forearms, shoulders and backs.

Literary tattoos on arms and backs

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical collage of several photographs, each showing a small black ink tattoo on skin with a book title and author name printed beside it. The tattoos include short text, quotes and tiny line illustrations such as animals, ships and simple motifs. The work is in fine black linework and light shading, and the images are arranged in a column with the people largely cropped or shown from behind.

Fine line Lettering Upper arm Forearm Shoulder Back Lettering Quote Script Bear Ship Bird Book Line drawing Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bear came over the back fence the week the runner beans went in, and nobody on Hollin Row believed me until they saw the bins. I had been Mrs Pell for forty-one years and had never once seen a bear in Leeds, but there it was, sat on my upturned bucket with the patience of a man waiting for a bus.

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It did not want the beans. It wanted the rhubarb, which I had grown from my mother's crown and guarded like a cat guards a saucer. I offered it a rind of cheddar from the kitchen windowsill, and it took it with the good manners of a lodger. We stood there a while, the two of us, the sweet peas climbing between us like a fence nobody had agreed to.

My late husband Frank had kept a notebook of seeds and wild things, pressed bracken and loose pencil notes. On one page, under a sketch of a stag's skull, he had written in his blocky capitals: THE WILD IS NOT AWAY FROM US. I thought it a foolish line when I first read it. That evening I read it aloud to the bear, and it sighed and lay down across the path like a dog who has heard enough.

By morning it had gone back over the fence, leaving one neat paw print in the wet soil beside the compost heap. I did not tell the council. I left the rhubarb uncovered and the cheese on the sill, and each night I read a little more of Frank's notebook into the dark, which I suspect is all the wild ever wanted from us: a bit of attention and a bit of cheese.