Sunday, September 25, 2011

The books to come

the publisher of The books to come tells me that the distributor, Small Press Distribution, is now out of stock, but a few copies are still available from the publisher. The price is US$40 plus $5 postage within the US, and $15 overseas. Payment can be made by check to Cuneiform Press, Center for Literary Publishing, University of Houston-Victoria, College of Arts & Sciences, 3007 North Ben Wilson, Victoria, TX 77901-5731, USA - or by PayPal to kyleschlesinger@gmail.com



Friday, September 23, 2011

Anne of the Iron Door

my new novella, Anne of the Iron Door, (pub. Black Pepper Publishing, Melbourne), was recently launched at Readings Bookshop in Carlton, Melbourne by Alex Skovron. It's a fable based on historical documents relating to Johann Gutenberg (The Gutenberg Documents, ed. Douglas C McMurtrie, OUP New York 1941), but bearing little or no relation to what can be known. The blurb says : "In the city of Strasbourg in 1436, a woman sued the father of printing, Johann Gutenberg, for breach of promise. Her name was Ennelin zu der Iserin Tur, in English, Anne of the Iron Door. The outcome of the court case is not known, but it is known that Gutenberg never married, and he did pay taxes for 'another person' in Strasbourg sometime before 1440. . . . Of Anne we know almost nothing beyond her remarkable name. In Alan Loney's extraordinary fable he uses the historical documents to weave a fictional life for Anne, almost purely for the purpose of keeping her name alive." 
         The book can be ordered  from Black Pepper here -




and for Alex Skovron's speech at the launch, go here

Thursday, September 22, 2011

A new anthology

it's not often my poetry gets anthologised, but Red Dragonfly Press has included the whole of my poem Katalogos (which they published in a lovely letterpress edition, Minnesota 2010) in a collection of their published work over 15 years. Founded in the mid-1990s by Scott King, the press now has a considerable list - the anthology features 68 poets across 325 pages, and is beautifully designed in Quadraat & Quadraat Sans type, with an elegant letterpress printed dust jacket. Red Dragonfly not only prints & publishes, but it also casts type, making offerings of specific castings from time to time. To buy the book, &/or see what else the press has to offer, go here -



Tuesday, September 20, 2011

the Alphabeta series

Marion May Campbell's if not in paint is actually the second in the Alphabeta series - a set of books of poems, each of a set number of pages, that the printer has offered to various poets he wishes to print. The 'recipe' for the poems is quite restricted by the smallness of my bench-top Albion press, particularly in the length of the line that is available to the poet. So far, no one I made the offer to to has declined, so the challenge is obviously attractive - 
         the first in the series was Tony Green's SOURDOUGH (there are only 4 copies left), a spread from which is here -




and here's the poet, Tony Green, whose brilliant books on the painter Nicolas Poussin, Nicolas Poussin paints the Seven Sacraments twice (2000), and Poussin's Humour (2009) are well worth a close read, and who posts a lot of his work here -


        


the next in the series is Picture Day by Kyle Schlesinger (USA), and books to come include Elizabeth Wilson (New Zealand), Kevin Hart (an Aussie in the USA), and Devin Johnston (USA) - 

Monday, September 19, 2011

if not in paint

printing is now complete for Marion May Campbell's if not in paint - and the boxes are due for delivery in a few days. Here's what part of the cover looked like, an eight-line (96pt) seriffed wood type of unknown provenance, but looking like De Vinne, inked up, in the press 


and here's the finished cover, printed on damped handmade Fabriano Roma paper, and the other type is Libra, designed by S H de Roos for the Typefoundry Amsterdam in 1939 -


it's intriguing to me that most use of wood type tends to emphasise a kind of clunkiness or solidity that some feel is somehow the 'essence' of wood type - but I think it is as capable of as much subtlety, flexibility and elegance as any other type, and color is part of the key to that - here the color is straight from the process yellow can as is the Fire Red for the overprint, both Handschy Inks

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Beginning again. . .

Starting today - figuring that this is how I keep up with what I am doing - printing the first of two colors for the cover of Marion May Campbell's if not in paint - in 40 copies with 31 for sale - each book has two acrylic drawings by Miriam Morris, all originals, each one unique, in other words she had to draw each drawing about 50 times to get the 40 for the edition - here's the first one, spread out to dry, against the background of a neglected garden - the indeterminacy principle states that one cannot print & garden at the same time 




and here's the original (the first) which served as the model for all the other approximations which followed and which will find their way into the book -