Sunday, June 29, 2014

a Lullaby for David Mitchell

one of New Zealand's most interesting & innovative poets of the early 1970s, David Mitchell, died in 2011 - his 1970 book, Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby, was one of a small set of publications that changed the shape of poems and the conversation about them in New Zealand for the next three decades - Ross Brighton, a New Zealand poet of a later generation, has written a deeply felt & beautifully crafted poem, originally sub-titled "On the occasion of the scattering of his ashes on Auckland Harbour", in honour of his predecessor, and it's my pleasure to present this poem as the next Electio Edition - 

here's cover, laid out to dry, of Cave handmade paper - the image is made up simply of brass rules, and printed using only a gloss varnish - so, depending on the angle of vision, the image will either look black or will shine with reflected light - 


26 copies will be printed, with Cave handmade covers, the poem printed on Magnani handmade paper 130gsm, in Dante type with Gill Sans Light for display, and protected in a cloth-covered chemise - all at $260 the copy - publication date : end July - 

the variety of color in the image shows a bit lighter here than in the paper itself, but the shifting hues are made by partially dipping the sheet into successive trays of color in a fairly random way - all sheets are therefore different, and the relation of the printed image to the shifting colors in the paper is always different from sheet to sheet -