Reverting to the printed prospectus

I am changing the way I inform 'the world' about new books coming from Electio – I am reverting to the more traditional printed prospectus rather than the email notice  –  to this end, you will need to provide me with a postal address, and electronic notices will no longer be issued - but I will continue to post news about fresh books here on the blog - 

in part this is necessitated because my email list has grown 'like topsy' over the last several years, but that growth has been accompanied with a fall in sales rather than an increase - but the printed prospectus provides a sample of my printing & sense of design - they will be printed on nice paper in at least 2 colors, and printed on the handpress as the books are - so each one is a small taster of the book to come - 

NOTE : this will not apply to Standing Order customers, who will receive a copy of the prospectus with each copy of the books –

New book on its way

the new book, Will there be words, is now well into production - three sheets out of the five to be printed are done - the above photo (as usual, taken by Miriam) shows some of the images spread out to dry - the edition will be 26 copies with 22 for sale - the paper is handmade Magnani damped for printing on the Albion (being used as a drying rack in the photo) - and the type is Monotype Dante thruout - bookbinder Barbara Schmelzer in New South Wales is making the boxes for this edition, and I'll post a photo of that as it arrives - the soft cover is Green Crackle made by Cave Paper in Minneapolis - the images, two in the book, are made using brass rules, a good collection I acquired over twenty years ago and have barely used - a nice thing about them is that they were clearly used for a lot of trade jobbing work and are no longer quite straight flat slabs of solid color when printed - that is, they have character (which is better than saying that they show signs of wear & tear, or are damaged etc - but it means that with each pull on the press, the little marks on the surfaces of the rules are the same from print to print - and one can then decide whether their arrangement is what one is happy with or whether they might be shifted around - for me, this is a new prospect for the appearance of tiny details from a surface altered by time & chance - 

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

The Holloway Press in Christchurch

the Christchurch Art Gallery is about to exhibit a recent show, Dark Arts: Twenty Years of the Holloway Press, from the Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland of the work of The Holloway Press, which has just been shut down by the University of Auckland. Peter Vangioni of the Christchurch Art Gallery has posted news of the show on their blog, viewable here - here are two nice pics from Fishwork, poems by Loney & wonderful paintings & prints on paper by Max Gimblett - 

the poet in San Francisco

here's a view of a cabinet on show at the San Francisco Public Library, the picture kindly sent to me by Susan Filter in Berkeley - at bottom right is an opening in LOOM, wood engravings by Richard Wagener, poems by 'the present writer', and the book published jointly by David Pascoe's Nawakum Press and Richard Wagener's Mixolydian Press, both in California - see Nawakum Press for details - 

the estate of George South

I am at present planning to make a book of the poems of George South, who took his life in either Melbourne or Sydney in 1965 - his poems were all typed up by Margo Sutherland in New Zealand around 1964, and I have had this collection, and 9 of George's Notebooks, in my possession since that time - 

I have no idea however who, if anyone, was/is trustee of his estate, or even (which I suspect) whether he died intestate - the only clue I have is that he knew someone called Helen closely just before he died - 

if anyone can help, I'd be very grateful - 

more on Jenson's Greek

this long-awaited (i.e. by the printer!) book is now bound, and the boxes are now in production - publication date is looming (well, August 1, 2014) - just 21 of the 26 copies are for sale at $800 the copy - here is what the unboxed book looks like, at least on the outside - both pics were taken by Barbara Schmelzer, who bound the books - 

more on Lullaby

printing on Lullaby proceeds apace, with the final sheet with its 5 runs thru the press being done now - here's the colophon page - 

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 - 

the Book has arrived

eMailing flowers to Mondrian is here, and now for sale. The earlier price is now seen as way too low - the edition is 100 copies, of which 80 are for sale at AUD $60 (includes post & packing) - you can pay thru PayPal to my email address - alanloney(at)gmail(dot)com - 

for those who live in Melbourne, or who are passing thru at a judicious time, there'll be a proper book launch in the next couple of weeks - email me if you want to be on the mailing list -

first Hawk Press book getting closer

things are now getting closer to issuing the first Hawk Press title : eMailing flowers to Mondrian, now refigured as being by both Alan Loney & Max Gimblett - there's a Gimblett drawing on the cover & two other flower drawings, both done in 2001, inside the book - a whole new digital era in the life of the printer! or some such nonsense - anyway, for your delectation, and mine, here's the cover -

the first Hawk Press title

signalled a few days ago, the first Haw Press title is almost ready for production - it is Emailing flowers to Mondrian, and will be printed digitally in 100 copies at $30 each, including parcel & postage. The full color cover will show a drawing by Max Gimblett - Publication date will be mid February - and this is from the book's Foreword - 

This poem is made by taking phrases verbatim from emails between myself & Max Gimblett after the poem Mondrian’s flowers was written and before pictures that were made for the poem were begun. The resultant publication was Mondrian’s flowers, published by Steve Clay at Granary Books, New York 2002. The original emails are often detailed about the original poems and often personal between poet and artist, and while they are a precise register of an enjoyable conversation they also carry a burden of ‘other matters’ which neither of us wish to launch into the domain. The poem then seeks to lift the burden of the emails but keep some of the words to see if they remain active on their own terms. 

copies can be ordered by emailing me and payments done thru PayPal to me at my email address - 

Anne of the Iron Door

the publication of my novella Anne of the Iron Door by Black Pepper Press in Melbourne a few years ago has gone totally without public notice and almost no sales at all - but a couple of days ago Lisa Hill has reviewed it on her blog, & that review can be seen here - 

         a small clue to what the book is in some way "about" can be found hidden in the words Gutenberg, Gutenberg, Gutenberg, Gutenberg, Gutenberg, Gutenberg etc etc etc -

last day of the year

I have no idea what ought, or ought not, be said at such a time - having myself no interest or need in the business of so-called "celebrating" any day (xmas, new year, birthday etc) it remains, even after all this time, a problem for me to figure out what, for others, all the fuss is about - time takes no notice of these apparent markers, nor does the poem, nor does the book, nor does love, nor do the turtle-doves I feed in the mornings, always before I feed myself - 
         yet the quiet hiatus provided by the general social shut-down at this time does provide me with a bit of space - from printing and from organising CODEX 2014 - in which to think about how I'd like to proceed from now on - 
         at such times, I am usually tempted to make overt & all-too-definite pronouncements about what is or aint gonna emerge from this printery henceforth - but I'm too aware of the dangers of that - too many recantings in the past - 
         if anything now, an openness rather than the almost desperate & almost useless planning I have tried to do before - if only I can do this & achieve that, then all will be well etc etc etc  - 
         to make a book in the same way I make a poem - 
         to make a book in the same way I make a poem -
         to make a book in the same way I make a poem - 

you can see the problem

always, at the beginning, with no starting blocks or wall to push away from -

as a kid, swimming in the Hutt River 
to move off somewhere only 
to step into a pothole - 

nevertheless, may you all
have a great 2014

reviving Hawk Press

over the years I have occasionally wished I had stuck to Hawk Press as my press name, but, as we know, life moves on, decisions get made, and one way & another we manage with things - in recent years, at the same time that writing has become more important to me rather than less, and printing has taken up more of my time & energy rather than less, I have found it harder & harder to either : get my work accepted by publishers; or : seeing the work come out after a publisher has accepted it, then failed to produce it, even up to three years after acceptance - it has been a frustrating four or five years for me in this regard, and of course it may be that my writing life is over, and I'm unable to produce what anyone wants to publish any more - it happens to people, and there's no basic reason why it shouldn't happen to me too - I have now pulled a number of texts from publishers who have held on to them for too long, and have stopped sending texts out to publishers altogether -

however, I have decided, now that I have ten unpublished works on file, to begin publishing them myself - in digitally printed editions of 100 copies @ $30 to $50 each - reviving the imprint of Hawk Press - and I'll sell them from this blog & from home - expect the first of these to show up on this blog in January 2014 - 

Electio will of course continue - more modestly than before -