Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Vale Martin Harrison

yesterday, poet Michael Farrell rang to tell me our mutual friend, poet & critic, Martin Harrison had died - born in 1949, he was probably 65 and, for me, gone too soon - while we met a long time ago, 1979 in Auckland, New Zealand, we may only have met & talked less than ten times since then, but it was always warm & refreshing, and we usually talked about Heidegger - I printed his second book of poems, TRUCE, at Hawk Press in 1979, and the book was launched in the Denis Cohn Gallery in Auckland - the book's colophon reads "This book is designed, handset & printed by Alan Loney in a limited edition of 200 copies. The paper is Abbey Mills Text, the type is Centaur, & the printing is done on an Arab treadle platen. The binding is hand-sewn by Alison Loney, who also set the wooden letters for the cover." 
and here's one poem from the book - in Martin's typescript he had whited out parts of letters where SUN & CLOUD break thru the poem - in letterpress printing of course, white-out is not possible, so I had to hack away at the metal type with hammer & screwdriver in order to get the effect he wanted, which is this - 
those who knew & loved him and his work will miss him