A Book Shop Owner As Stuntman

Illustration by Arnold M. Herr ©2016

At the Megalopolis Book Shop, Mickey Tsimmis was all about customer service. No matter how potentially catastrophic the request (i.e. pulling a book from the shelves), Mickey was ready to sacrifice his life to help out. Coolly insouciant (or idiotic), he ignored the peril that was routine while navigating through the thicket that was Megalopolis. Danger was his business and to satisfy a customer no obstacle was too great to overcome. Scaling the shelves was an Olympic event in his jungle jumble of books, where organization was overrated and safety was for sissies.

Illustration from The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer by Arnold M. Herr, "one of the wildest rides since Thompson and Steadman (or perhaps Mr. Toad) took to the highway."

"Screamingly funny" (Bookstore Memories). 

Herr, Arnold M. The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer. Berkeley: Poltroon Press in association with Booktryst, 2016. Octavo. Photo-illustrated wrappers. 136 pp. Illustrations by the author. BUY NOW.

__________

__________

A Rare & Used Book Shop Owner's Lament

Illustration by Arnold M. Herr ©2016

Poor Mickey Tsimmis, his innocence lost in cruel Hollywood, the burg without mercy, the hamlet of vulgarity, the city without a soul. It's Despairsville, man, a drag and a half. But relief and change you could believe in were routinely found at his Megalopolis Book Shop on Melrose Ave. east of La Brea, west of the moon, south of no north.

__________

Illustration from The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer by Arnold M. Herr, "one of the wildest rides since Thompson and Steadman (or perhaps Mr. Toad) took to the highway."

Herr, Arnold M. The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer. Berkeley: Poltroon Press in association with Booktryst, 2016. Octavo. Photo-illustrated wrappers. 136 pp. Illustrations by the author. BUY NOW.
__________

Apologies to Kay Nielsen and Charles Bukowski.
__________ 
__________

Leonard Cohen: You Do Not Have To Love Me At Auction (Or Anywhere Else)

by Stephen J. Gertz

A copy of Canadian poet and songwriter-singer Leonard Cohen's poem, You Do Not Have To Love Me is being offered by PBA Galleries in its Beats, Counterculture & the Avant Garde, Richard Synchef Collection Part II sale tomorrow, January 30, 2014. It is estimated to sell for $400 - $600.

In letterpress designed and printed by Bill Roberts (of Bottle of Smoke Press) and tipped-in to black paper card, it is copy "N" of 26 lettered copies signed by Cohen of a total edition of 126. Originally published in 1968, it is here issued as Sore Dove Press Broadside Series Number 33, published in 2008. It has already become quite collectible.

Facing the poem is an original oil painting by artist-poet Soheyl Dahl.

Included in the lot are seven Sore Dove Press postcards celebrating Cohen, two duplicated with black lettering.

As part of the lot, a copy of singer-songwriter (and Leonard Cohen collaborator) Anjani Thomas' poem, Holy Ground, is being offered. No. 31 of 100 signed copies, it, too, is in letterpress designed and printed by Bill Roberts. It was published by Sore Dove Press in 2009.

"Sore Dove Press is edited and published by Soheyl Dahi, an artist and poet living in San Francisco. It is a progressive press that publishes poetry chapbooks and broadsides by established poets ranging from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, and Jack Hirschman to newcomers like the talented actress and poet Amber Tamblyn. The press also actively looks for and publishes poets to make their debut in print. The chapbooks and broadsides are printed in small editions. A limited number are signed by the poets and when possible a lettered edition with an original painting by the poets is included" (website).

__________

Images courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
__________
__________

The Small Press / Mimeograph Revolution 1940s - 1970s

by Stephen J. Gertz

Jim Schock. Life is a Lousy Drag.
Unicorn Publishing, Co., 1959.

A remarkable research collection of small press magazines and other printed matter representing the growth and proliferation of avant-garde and small press publications, often mimeographed, has come to market via Granary Books in New York.

The Outsider, no. 1. 1961.
Jon Edgar Webb, ed.
Complete run.

The collection is based upon (but not limited to) A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, the New York Public Library's acclaimed 1998 exhibition and catalog that explored the explosive and fertile period of intense innovation and experimentation in American literature and publishing that occurred below the mainstream's radar during the 1940s - 1970s.

The Insect Trust Gazette, no. 3. 1968.
Robert Basara, Leonard Belasco, Jed Irwin, William Levy, eds.
Collection includes nos. 1, 3.

Merlin, no. 1. Spring 1952.
Alexander Trocchi, ed.
Collection includes vol. 1, nos. 1–3, vol. 2, nos. 1, 3.

The individual - a reclusive New Jersey inventor - who amassed the collection joyfully suffered from that dreaded of all maladies, libri legendi aegritudinis, the book collector's disease: he "became obsessed with the secretive nature of the world contained in the exhibition's catalog."  He used the catalog as a guide and thus put together a singular library, one that he augmented with important ancillary material focusing on the West Coast scene.

The Illiterati, no. 4. Summer 1945.
Kermit Sheets and Kemper Nomland, eds.

The Digger Papers. [1968].
24 pp. Published by Paul Krassner.

The Beat Generation, Counterculture, New York School, Venice West, San Francisco Renaissance, Wichita Vortex, Black Mountain, Mavericks, Hippies, Diggers, and related manifestations of the swirling undercurrent of creativity of the era are all represented in the collection, which includes complete runs and significant examples of Angel Hair, Beatitude, Big Table, Black Mountain Review, C, Caterpillar, Fuck You, Gnaoua, Grist, The Hasty Papers, Insect Trust Gazette, J, Kulchur, Locus Solus, Matter, Measure, Miscellaneous Man, Merlin, Mother, Now, Open Space, The Outsider, Pacific Nation, Poems from the Floating World, Renaissance, San Francisco Earthquake, Set, Some/thing, Tree, Trobar, Whe're/, and Yugen.

[Wallace Berman]. Frammis.
Jack Hirschman and Jack Mueller, eds.
Published by Artaud’s Elbow, Berkeley, 1979.

Edward Leedskalnin. A Book in Every Home:
Containing Three Subjects: Ed’s Sweet Sixteen,
Domestic and Political Views.
Self-published, 1936.

Edward Leedskalnin was born January 12, 1887, in Latvia.
At 26 he was engaged to wed a girl 10 years younger whom
he called his "Sweet Sixteen." She broke off the engagement
the night before their wedding and, brokenhearted,
he moved to North America.

Around 1919 he purchased a small piece of land in
Florida City and over the next 28 years constructed
(and lived in) a massive coral monument dedicated
to his "Sweet Sixteen" called "Rock Gate Park."
Working alone at night, Leedskalnin eventually dug
up and sculpted over 1,100 tons of coral into a monument
that would later be known as the Coral Castle.
He would often be asked how he was able to move such
huge boulders and replied:
"I know the secrets of the people who built the pyramids
(being those at the site at Giza in Egypt)."

A Book in Every Home is the longest of Leedskalnin's books
and is a treatise on moral education. He also wrote theories
on magnetism and electricity, including what he called the
“Perpetual Motion Holder.” He went to the grave
refusing to reveal his secret knowledge of the Egyptians.

The '60s West Coast scene is represented by samples of The San Francisco Oracle, The Southern California Oracle, Communications Company (the publishing arm of the Diggers); items relating to the explosive San Francisco music scene including a collection of handbills and postcards from Family Dog and others; newspapers and magazines of radical politics such as The Berkeley Barb, Ramparts, The Realist; uncommon pre-zine self-published journals of offbeat commentary such as Horseshit and Jack Green's Newspaper; and a wide assortment of pamphlets, magazines and diverse additional obscure and rarely seen publications from the period.

Gnaoua, no. 1. Spring 1964.
Ira Cohen, ed.
Sole issue, no. 1]

Measure, no. 2. Winter 1958.
John Wieners, ed.
Collection includes nos. 1–2.

The writers, artists, and photographers who contributed to these magazines include a who's who of  American (and, to a lesser degree, European) arts and letters in the second half of the twentieth century,  the wrecking crew whose adventures and experiments upset the status quo and built the foundation for a new American post-War culture, a once alternative fraternity now in the mainstream of Postmodern America with a degree of acceptance that they could never have imagined, once outside, now venerated, 21st century insiders:

Now Now. 1965.
Charles Plymell, ed.
Collection includes nos. 1–2.

Robert Duncan, Kenneth Patchen, Denise Levertov, Alex Comfort, William Everson, William Burford, Alexander Trocchi, Christopher Logue, Patrick Brangwyn, Alfred Chester, H. Charles Hatcher, James Fidler, Patrick Bowles, Richard Seaver, A.J. Ayer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, Robert Creeley, Jack Kerouac, Edward Dahlberg, William S. Burroughs, Gilbert Sorrentino, Lenore Kandel, ruth weiss, Philip Lamantia, Gregory Corso Richard Brautigan, Joe Brainard, Ted Berrigan, Andy Warhol, Gerald Malanga, Frank O'Hara, John Thomas, Charles Bukowski, Neal Cassady, George Bataille, Ed Ruscha, Antonin Artaud, Brion Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, Michael McClure, Bruce Connor, Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Bruce Connor, Wallace Berman, Dennis Hopper, Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, V.R. (Bunny) Lang, Leroi Jones, Alfred Jarry, Peter Berg, Emmett Grogan, and Paul Krassner.

___________

All images courtesy of Granary Books, currently offering this collection, with our thanks. Inquiries can be made here.
___________
___________

Four Days of the Codex Book Fair 2013

by Alastair Johnston

"There is not a prophet in the Old Testament who would not be excommunicated from the modern Church for the vehemence of his opinions" -- John J. Collins

The 2013 CODEX book fair brought together makers of expensive books from all over the world to show their wares. CODEX is timed to coincide with the biennial visit of the California International Antiquarian Book Fair to San Francisco and for that reason (among others) I have never attended, being more interested in the old book I've never seen than the new book I cannot afford, but this time it had been moved to the week preceding the ABAA/ILAB event. It was also moved physically from Pauley Ballroom on the U C Berkeley campus to a former Ford plant in the wilderness of Richmond, California, where I agreed to help staff a friend's table.

The CODEX book fair is the baby of Peter Koch, who models himself after Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press, a grand bookman in the tradition of the Grabhorn Press, producing trouser-press editions of chestnut texts with an emphasis on the materiality of the book, rather than the originality of the work. In fact the typography and imagery generally reflect a style that was popular in the 1930s and is based on pattern-recognition, so people will look at it and think "Ah, a fine press book," rather than question the originality of the concept, production methods (increasingly faux letterpress from computer-generated plastic plates) or structure. Even the Codex fair "look" is based on Cassandre's eccentric Bifur typeface designed in 1929.

Perhaps the success of the fair is due to the "Kindle Effect" (like the "Connecticut Effect" which the NRA hopes will soon wear off). While there is a genuine nostalgia for "real" books after the sudden surge in the e-Book market, it is surprising to see these fancy books still hanging on to an audience, but at $800 for a table there were not going to be too many purveyors of medium-priced well-made books or "democratic multiples." But the fair has grown and consequently a second aspect of it, a morning-long symposium for some of the participants to discuss their work in detail, was sold out.

To accommodate those who missed out on the symposium, it was webcast live, which seemed like a good idea. However, the camera was at the back of the auditorium and the sound was picked up there, rather than fed from the podium, so you mainly heard coughing; the speakers were but a distant speck beneath the large blurry & skewed video screen on which they showed their work. One speaker I heard sounded very silly saying "balance of type image concept brought back into balance." Maybe I heard him wrong. And while it seemed a majority of the exhibitors were women, there was only one woman speaker in the symposium.

San Francisco skyline from Point Richmond

Point Richmond is a long drive from sillivization and not easily accessible by public transport unless you want to brave the environs of one of the scariest BART stations in the system. Exhibitors could buy a bus ticket (for an additional $50!) to get them there and back before and after the 4 long days of showing their work. It is a lovely setting though, in an old Ford tank factory right on the San Francisco Bay, next to the Rosie the Riveter museum. But once there, attendees are stuck. When it was held at Pauley Ballroom (currently being renovated) it was a short walk to the hotels, restaurants and bookstores of Telegraph Avenue. One woman's suggestion: since Peter is such a macho cowboy, he should hold the next one at the Cow Palace.

Peter is famous for his drinking stories, according to one Midwestern exhibitor. In December, I went to a talk at Moe's Books, advertised as a "preview of CODEX," as I was eager to learn about the fair and its attendance -- not just who is showing work, but what kind of numbers show up, if sales are made, or is it all window-shopping (Since the cost to exhibit is so steep it's not a light investment for most presses, never mind airfare and hotel). Instead I had to sit through a provincial account of "My big trip to Venice," telling how much of Peter's wife's money they spent. As you no doubt know, Prosecco flows like water in Venezia, and only rubes pay $15 for a glass of Prosecco, but that seemed to be the apogee of Peter's visit. That and the fact they spent $15,000 or was it 50,000? in pre-production costs for the reprint of the Joseph Brodsky book they produced there, Watermark, that retails for $6000. Unfortunately the fair suffers from being closely associated with Peter Koch though you cannot imagine all the exhibitors are so pretentious.

There was a lot to look at: too much in fact, and by the time people came around the nearly 200 tables, like yachts with luffing sails being pulled sideways into the Richmond dock, they had that glazed "museum-goer" look. I saw lots of "gratuitous structure": books that were in flag or accordion-spine formats for no reason other than it was a cool idea at the time (with of course no recognition for Hedi Kyle who originated those structures). But, warned Peggy Gotthold, as she showed me her elaborately constructed anthology "For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn," there are no new structures, only rediscovered ones.

I remarked on the one aspect of such fairs which always bothers me: the artists themselves are sitting behind their work, some looking more confident than others, but every person who walks by is seen to judge the work, with either an instant curiosity (sometimes simply "how did you name your press?") or instant indifference: "hmmm, whatever it is I don't wanna know!" One attendee said she felt guilty looking at the books because although she was fascinated, she couldn't afford them and maybe was preventing some librarian from getting in close to make a purchase.

Peter Koch printing the cruciform poster for CODEX 2013

In the valedictorian speech (on line) Koch said he welcomed criticism, as long as it was couched in flattering terms, so kudos to Peter and his son Max for pulling this off four times. While the real audience is rich collectors and librarians, the value of Codex is it enlarges the tiny pond of the Bay Area book arts scene. It's a chance for local enthusiasts to learn something, to get ideas or to meet artists and printers. But it is marred by the cowboy aesthetic. Many women exhibitors complained about the Wild West theme (which is inherent in Peter's typography -- he likes beat-up wood type and the bullets/lead analogy). The poster for the fair is a large Xtian cross with CODEX vertically and 2013 being the horizontal arms; then it has "Drawing a bead on the book" as a subtitle. Targets abound. We are not all hicks in shitkickers, these ladies complain, please leave the target practice out. 

Artist Cathy DeForest listening to dealer Donna Seager

The Bay Area and the bustling Santa Cruz book arts scene were well represented, and it spirals out from there to Ninja Press and Pie in the Sky in Southern California, to Inge Bruggeman (Ink-A! Press), Cathy DeForest, and Diane Jacobs (Scantronic) who work in Oregon. One reason to exhibit was to let people know you are still around. Though nonagenarian Jack Stauffacher was not present, his Greenwood Press was represented by one of his authors, photographer Dennis Ledbetter, holding down the fort. Walter Hamady's daughter, Samantha, showed his superlative Perishable Press work and reassured passersby that Walter is not dead -- in fact he is a sprightly 72, though he gave up printing two years ago to concentrate on sculpture and collage. His last book, A Timeline of Sorts, as well as copies of many of his other fine works, were on display at Codex for the first time.

Walter Hamady's parting gesture

M K Publishers from St Petersburg (Russia) were there and Vladimir Zimakov: I didn't know his name but did recognize his work. Mexico, alongside California, was well represented, but there was simply too much to take in. On Facebook people have posted amazing snapshots of things I missed. Nevertheless here is my hopefully constructive criticism: four days is too long (the first day could be a one-day symposium followed by a 3-day bookfair). The fair should end at dusk: since there are no lights in the Craneway Pavilion it was too dark to see the books for the last hour. One final idea: invite a taco truck to park outside.

Browsing in the gloaming

The best looking book I saw was one with five pochoir plates from Shanty Bay Press of Canada, but it is not even for sale, being out of print.

There were many international book artists, like <usus>(Stoltz & Schneider), the lexikon gang "Zweite Enzyklopädie von Tlön", and Veronika Schäpers from Germany, the latter now working in Japan. Italians, French and Brits were there too, from Whittington Press who do traditional Monotype work and publish Matrix magazine, to Susan Allix who presents her fine art in quirky formats, but always impeccably presented.

And surprisingly there was one genuine literary publisher of affordable books there: The Brother in Elysium from Brooklyn, New York, who had a new folder of Ed Sanders' Glyphs and a witty packaging of a Ted Berrigan work in a library binding with a big "WITHDRAWN" stamp and library pocket stuck in. He may have broken even, but only because he was visited by librarians from The Bancroft, Simon Fraser, Florida State University and Stanford. Many of the exhibitors were breathlessly awaiting the arrival of Mark Dimunation of the Library of Congress, hoping he would bestow a purchase order on them. Meanwhile there was plenty of schmoozing to go around.
__________
__________

A Checklist of Goliard Press Jobwork (London 1965-7)

by Alastair Johnston  

Tom Raworth Working Bibliography part III

               porque todo: ropaje, piel, vasijas,

               palabras, vino, panes,

               se fué, cayó a la tierra

                                -- Pablo Neruda, Alturas de Macchu Picchu (1945)

             (for everything: clothes, skin, cups,
                words, wine, bread,
                has disappeared, fallen to earth)

While running Matrix Press, Tom Raworth had done bits of job-printing. His biggest commission was a catalogue with full-colour cover for an exhibition of paintings by Michael Kidner at the Grabowski Gallery. Though Raworth was tired working full time and typesetting and printing at night, Barry Hall interested him in the idea of collaborating in a new press venture. In 1965, they started Goliard Press in a stable behind Finchley Road tube station, leveling the cobbled floor with planks for the equipment to stand on. It was still an evening-and-weekend operation as both were working full-time, but Hall's job as an engraver meant he could put through blocks for their own projects, while Raworth's correspondents from Outburst magazine meant there was no shortage of material to print and publish.

Cover for LOVE LOVE LOVE (Corgi Books, 1967) Artist unknown

The small press scene in London was friendly and fluid with the three main presses, Trigram, Fulcrum and Goliard collaborating frequently. Rathna Ramanathan* characterizes the others thus: "Trigram Press (1965 to 1980) was founded by American poet Asa Benveniste and his English wife Penelope (Pip). Trigram books were notable amongst little presses for the quality of their design and production. A number of Trigram books were printed letterpress or silk-screen by Benveniste and Pip's son Paul Vaughan. Benveniste also designed and printed for other little presses. Louis Zukofsky, Gavin Ewart, and Tom Raworth are some of the poets whose work was published by Trigram Press."

"Fulcrum Press (1965 to 1974) was run by the Rhodesian poet Stuart Montgomery and his wife Deirdre. Fulcrum Press was one of the best known little presses of the period and is recognized for publishing the works of Modernist poets, among them Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting, Allen Ginsberg and Roy Fisher."

The Fulcrum Press of Stuart & Deirdre Montgomery was not a printer however, and had most of their printing done by Villiers Press, which was serviceable though typographically uninspired (like the City Lights books they also printed). Montgomery's interest was in marketing so he wanted his books to conform to the (dull) appearance of other trade books, and he also issued special limited edition signed hardbacks on tinted Glastonbury laid paper to lure the collector market. However, Montgomery frequently had exceptional cover art from Tom Phillips, Barnett Newman, Patrick Caulfield, Ian Dury, Ron Kitaj or Richard Hamilton. He also commissioned work from the other small presses in town. Fulcrum's finest work is Basil Bunting's Loquitur (1965), designed by Richard Hamilton and printed at the Eden & Finsbury Press.

A major difference between Fulcrum and Goliard books is the labour involved. Goliard's books were all hand-set whereas Villiers used Intertype to set the books of Fulcrum, meaning longer works, like Gary Snyder's 164-page Regarding Wave (1972), could be typeset relatively quickly. The three vital small presses were joined by Ferry Press whose books were published by Andrew Crozier. He was a Cambridge student who contacted Val and Tom for information on American poetry. Raworth remembers him as "a dry, intelligent man." He started with Thread by Fielding Dawson in 1964. That year Crozier went to SUNY/ Buffalo on a Fulbright Scholarship and became a student of Olson.

Though they were selling out 2-400 copies of their books, Goliard was kept afloat by commissions from other publishers, most significantly Bernard Stone who ran the crowded Turret Bookshop at number 1, Kensington Church Walk, not far from Biba, the iconic fashion shop. Stone was an influential figure in the English small press scene, serving wine in his bookshop on Saturday afternoons to assembled poets and authors. He published 20 graphically exciting poetry posters with Christopher Logue, started Steam Press with Ralph Steadman, and published the poetry he loved under the Turret Books imprint. As Raworth told me, "Poor old Bernard did use us, and pay on time..."

Edward Lucie-Smith, A Game of French and English, Turret Books, 1966

Hall & Raworth probably groaned at the MacBeth and Lucie-Smith manuscripts, but the commissions were important and show them being adventurous with materials. Though they never achieved the typographic acme of Asa Benveniste & Paul Vaughan at Trigram Press, their design for Edward Lucie-Smith's Game of French and English and Robin Fedden's Personal Landscape is excellent, while their handsomest productions for Stone, Zukofsky's Iyyob and Ted Hughes' Burning of the Brothel, mirror their own work at Goliard, so there was continuity with their vision and the jobs they took on.

At the point when Jonathan Cape came on board at Goliard in 1967, Raworth left, but he mentions that many manuscripts had piled up and the later Cape-Goliard publications of Paul Blackburn, Jeremy Prynne, Michael McClure, John Wieners and Charles Olson's Maximus Poems were in process. Raworth says, "We'd already been approached by George Rapp (the aluminium millionaire who later published as Rapp & Carroll) who offered to put money into the press; but we'd knocked him back, thinking that he'd want to publish boring stuff." Raworth recalled the occasion of his briefly famous remark when Rapp came by and asked how he "could help the Press and Poetry". "Give us the money and fuck off" was Raworth's reply. He had the same feeling about Jonathan Cape, that "no one gives money without wanting to influence the product, and I certainly wasn't interested in publishing manuscripts selected by committee."

The committee referred to was Tom Maschler, editor of Jonathan Cape, and one of his authors, Nathaniel Tarn. Born in Paris in 1928, Tarn trained as an anthropologist before turning to literature. His first book Old Savage, Young City was published by Jonathan Cape in 1964, for whom he also translated the widely acclaimed poem of Pablo Neruda, The Heights of Macchu Picchu. In 1967 he joined Cape as an editor and suggested they work with a small press. Among the options, Goliard was chosen and became Cape Goliard bringing more money and work to Barry Hall and a prestigious "loss-leader" to Jonathan Cape who could venture to print works by relative unknowns among their list, adding the New American voices of Olson, Robert Duncan, Zukofsky, their followers, and others. After Raworth left, Hall was joined by Chris Breyer.

While a student at King's College, Cambridge, Tarn had felt British poetry was still stuck on Rupert Brooke. At Cape he was able to bring not only anthropology (Claude Lévi-Strauss) but poetry in translation from Europe and Latin-America to the press, and this was a major service to the poetry-buying public, while at the same time Trigram & Fulcrum were continuing to promote the Transatlantic voices of Duncan, Zukofsky, Snyder, Ed Dorn, Larry Eigner, Lorine Niedecker and others to British readers.

As I said in Part II, Britain was not devoid of good poets: Roy Fisher, Basil Bunting, Philip Larkin and Hugh McDiarmid, among others, were important and influential writers. Penguin Modern Poets was launched in 1962 with the usual suspects but by 1966 they devoted a volume to the Mersey Sound of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough & Brian Patten and another to the Beat trio of Corso, Ferlinghetti & Ginsberg. 1966 was a great year for mass-market poetry in Britain with Penguin continuing its Modern European Poets series with Four Greek Poets (including Cavafy), Noboyuki Yuasa's translation of Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North, and the landmark Peter Whigham translation of Catullus, dedicated to the memory of William Carlos Williams. The emergent voices in Britain were being heard in live readings organized in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Merseyside and London by Alan Jackson, Tom Pickard, Pete Brown, Mike Horovitz and others. These young voices were proclaimed in a popular paperback book with psychedelic cover art, Love Love Love: The New Love Poetry (edited by Pete Roche, Corgi Books, 1967), published at 5 shillings: the average age of the poets involved was 25. But the Don Allen anthology, The New American Poetry (Grove Press, 1960), gained momentum and created interest in the concurrent voices from the USA. For Cape, Goliard was a solid conduit to the new writing because of the personal connections established by Raworth and Hall over the preceding five years.

Tom Maschler, Cape's editor-in-chief mainly dealt with Barry Hall, but "All of us were initiators and mediators," said Tarn. "I remember having to argue Cape's viewpoint with Barry at times and vice versa: unlike an independent little press, we all had to compromise on occasions. Sometimes Barry & I felt a little hard done by: in cases, for instance, where Cape would decide to take someone like Duncan for the general list rather than the Cape Goliard list. But, by and large, there was a great deal of latitude. Barry, fascinated by design, often performed miracles of book production within (or without!) the official budget. Editorial process was informal: things would come in from Barry's and my contacts and discussion would begin. Commissioning was in Cape's hands.

Part of Cape-Goliard's prolific output: The Adventures of Mr & Mrs Jim & Ron by Ron Padgett & Jim Dine (1970), Maya by Anselm Hollo (1970), J.H. Prynne Kitchen Poems (1968), Our Word, Guerilla Poems from Latin America translated by Ed Dorn & Gordon Brotherston (1968), Out Loud by Adrian Mitchell (1968), Wales: A Visitation by Allen Ginsberg (1968), & In the Dark Move Slowly by Tuomas Anhava, translated by Anselm Hollo (1969)

"The intention at Cape-Goliard was to publish avant-garde poets, mainly American, but with quite a few British and foreign, in the spirit of the little press with the full battery of typographic and design innovation which Barry could bring to the work. The products were to be sold as normal books, normally priced, though some de luxe versions were usually produced."

This arrangement continued until one day, fed up with Cape, Hall inked the press, ran the rollers halfway across a forme of type and walked out. (Oddly, as an eccentric badge of his role, Tarn would wear a cape in those days!) Hall did a few books under the Goliard imprint in New Mexico and in 1974 revived Goliard in London to print Ace, by Tom Raworth (but most of the edition was destroyed in a freak flood).

While this post is not about Cape Goliard's books it is important to distinguish Raworth and Hall's role in creating the market for new poetry in England and also in setting in motion the works of McClure, Olson, Ginsberg, Prynne and others that were published by Cape Goliard. Tarn has often spoken as if he was the instigator of these works, rather than the inheritor and benefactor of Raworth's groundwork. But this is nothing new in the small press world. A parallel instance is the frequent assertion of Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press in San Francisco that he came to town determined to bring into print the unknown talents of John Wieners, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Philip Lamantia, Lew Welch and the other poets who were published by Auerhahn. The truth is ALL of these works were printed by Dave Haselwood at Auerhahn before Hoyem came to San Francisco and became involved in the press (see, e.g., "The Good Book in Good Hands," by Carl Nolte, San Francisco Chronicle, December 27, 1998, or "Cast Out" by Ken Garcia, where again Hoyem states that he printed the first books of Burroughs and Whalen.)

Raworth says, "Certainly the Olson contact was mine (after all we'd already done West) ... and certainly the Prynne was in the works. The Blackburn too. The McClure came through Barry's SF connections I imagine. And we certainly had personal contacts with Berrigan, Ginsberg and Dine dating from well before the 'deal'. I can't really say that I'm bitter... I couldn't have stood working under those conditions, having to have 'meetings' with arseholes to 'decide'. I thought Tarn's Cape Editions series was excellent, so I had nothing personal against him. I didn't like how, in that Zamir piece,* the implication was that everything started with Cape Goliard, rather than with Goliard. But the important thing is that in London a few people and three or four presses (if one includes Ferry for example), starting from scratch, produced a lot of interesting and generally good-looking books in a very few years and made visible a very different world of poetry."

 

JOBWORK

Fulcrum Press

1965
Basil Bunting
Briggflatts
12 3/4 x 9 3/4", 30 pp laid paper; Hardback bound in black buckram, green laid paper dustwrapper printed in 72' Caslon with Celtic animal image printed in red.
Note: The poem, finished in May 1965, marked Bunting's triumphal return to poetry after years of obscurity as financial editor for a Newcastle newspaper. The first printing of Briggflatts was done by Hall & Raworth on Trigram's larger Glockner flat-bed cylinder press: so it was a three-way collaboration between the key small presses in London.
Colophon: This first edition is limited to 500 copies of which 100 are specially bound in cloth and 26 specially bound lettered A through Z are signed by the author. The text has been hand set in 14 pt. Caslon Old Face and printed at the Goliard Press London. We thank Barry Hall and Nick Strausfeld for the artwork, Tom Pickard and Gael Turnbull for their help and Poetry (Chicago) for their co-operation. This book has been designed by Stuart Montgomery.

The book has some awful half-uncial hand-lettering (by Strausfeld?) and clip art from Insular manuscripts printed as borders in black and red. The inspiration for these was probably Bunting's
   "punctuate a text whose initial,
     lost in Lindisfarne plaited lines
     stands for discarded love."
There are also Lombardic initials printed in red, with an upside-down C used as a D.

1965 broadside
Basil Bunting
Ode II/2
for Fulcrum Press, made as a Christmas card. Single sheet folded to make six panels.

1967

Ian Hamilton Finlay
Canal Games
Fulcrum Press
9 x 4". Set in 30 pt Placard Condensed caps, printed in multi-colours on 6 heavy cardboard leaves which have been trisected horizontally and spiral bound (in a red plastic comb binding), to form 18 cards which may be turned at random. 8 pp including titlepage and colophon: "This first edition of 1000 copies has been designed & printed by the Goliard Press, London. Fifty copies have been signed by the author & numbered."

Characteristically playful work from the Scots concrete poet and gardener.

Trigram Press

George Andrews, Burning Joy (Trigram Press, 1967)

1966
George Andrews
Burning Joy
9 3/4 x 6 3/8", 40 pp., wove paper, sewn and glued into coated card covers. 550 numbered copies, 1 to 50 signed by the author. Cover painting by Barry Hall, back cover photo by Hans Bruggeman. 15s $2.50 Set in 12' Monotype Centaur. Display in Cochin, cover title in Engravers Roman.
Note: As Benveniste was not a practicing printer when he started Trigram, and his son-in-law Paul was a silkscreen printer with only 6 months experience in letterpress, it's natural they would job out some early titles.

Ferry Press

Steve Jonas
Music Master
Illustrated by Barry Hall
Ferry Press 1966
Three panel folder with Hall's illustration, and Jonas' poem (a fold-out sheet) tipped-in. The edition was limited to 33 copies, each numbered and signed by Jonas and Hall.

Steve Jonas
Transmutations: Poems
Ferry Press 1966
Introduction by John Wieners. Drawing by Basil King.
9 3/4 x 7 1/2" 64 pp (unpaginated) wove paper, sewn and glued into plain pink wrappers, with white chromo dust jacket. Basil King cover image in red; set in 10' Perpetua, cover display in 36' Verona.

1966
Lawrence Clark Powell
Two tributes by Henry Miller
A souvenir of a visit by Lawrence Clark Powell to the College of Librarianship, Wales. 22 November 1966.
100 copies, 3 pp, folded to 10 x 6 1/2" Titlepage in green ink with Hall's rose image printed in red; inside text all printed in red ink. Colophon: "Printed in an edition of 100 by the Goliard Press, London, for The College of Librarianship, Wales.
 Handset in Cochin type, and printed on Glastonbury antique-laid paper.
 Rose drawn by Barry Hall." Right side of fold has two quotes from Henry Miller from Preface to The Air-conditioned Nightmare, 1945, and
 Preface to The Books in my Life, 1951. "No request of any sort, in fact, has he ever turned down." [Info from Kim C Mattheussens] Only institutional copy at UCLA.

Turret Books

Louis Zukofsky, IYYOB, Turret Books, 1965

1965
Louis Zukofsky
IYYOB
4 x 6", 16 pp. Printed on rag paper, and sewn into wraps, in a printed rice-paper dust jacket in large Hebrew in yellow, and Westminster. Text in Cochin type. The lace paper endpaper has acidified, causing discoloration of the neighbouring sheets.
AJ: I found a copy of IYYOB, is it Hebrew as heard?
TR: Original Word: אּיּוֹב
Transliteration: Iyyob
Phonetic Spelling: (ee-yobe')
Short Definition: Job...
I guess that's it... as in "Get an iyyob!"

1965
Edward Lucie-Smith
Fir Tree Song
11 1/4 x 9 1/2", sides folded into flaps to make doors; shaped poem in green and red Caslon type; 250 copies of which 75 numbered & signed; cover title printed vertically in Westminster type

1965
Edward Lucie-Smith
Three Experiments
11 1/2 x 5 1/2" trifold on tan card stock. Cover art in black and red (repeated inside in white). Text in Caslon & Arrighi italic printed in red, cover in Westminster. 80 copies, numbered & signed.

Edward Lucie-Smith, A Game of French and English, Turret Books, 1965

1965
Edward Lucie-Smith
A Game of French and English
8 x 5 5/8" 16 pp., stapled into french-folded wrappers, with a printed tissue dustwrapper, printed in red and blue in 60' Fry's Baskerville type. Text in 12' Cochin, 100 signed & numbered copies.

Dom Moraes, Beldam Etcetera, Turret Books, 1966

March 1966
Dom Moraes
Beldam Etcetera
8 7/8 x 5 3/8" 24 pp. of Glastonbury laid sewn into tan card wraps, with a printed duplex dust jacket. 100 signed & numbered copies, Goudy type. Title-page is printed on Japanese paper with a line-block facsimile of the manuscript in yellow and title display in turquoise.

1966
Christopher Logue
In May
broadside, yellow paper (not seen)

Robin Fedden, Personal Landscape, Turret Books, 1966

June 1966
Robin Fedden
Personal Landscape
5 1/2 x 6 1/2" 22 pages Glastonbury laid paper sewn into plain card wraps, with a printed yellow dust jacket. 1000 copies, of which 50 are cloth-bound (in burgundy cloth, with dust jacket). Prose memoir of Lawrence Durrell with a photograph by John Waller bound in. Goudy Old Face with Cochin italic display.

Ted Hughes, The Burning of the Brothel, Turret Books, 1966

October 1966

Ted Hughes
The Burning of the Brothel
11 1/4 x 9" 16 pp. cream-coloured Glastonbury paper, 12' Caslon type. Title in 48' Perpetua printed on a leaf of Japanese paper with lumps of bark (a sure way to destroy your type!). Illustrated with found medieval woodcuts, printed in colours. Sewn and covered with a printed blue wrapper. 300 copies of which 75 numbered and signed. (Variant: less than ten copies were issued in red wrappers before they were rejected in favour of blue.) Sagar & Tabor A9.

Edward Lucie-Smith, Gallipoli, Turret Books, 1966

December 1966
Edward Lucie-Smith
Gallipoli
13 x 6 1/8" broadside in green Cochin type on Glastonbury paper, in wrapper. 300 copies, of which 100 numbered & signed. Folded in thirds, with printed label on front of wrapper. My copy (shown) designated "1 of 3 quality Goliard Press proofs" and inscribed to (American collector) Joseph Gold from the author. (One of four or more Christmas cards issued by Turret Books.)

February 1967
Turret Poets Read
11 x 14 3/4" folded in thirds. Offset on cardstock; programme for reading at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), 17 Dover Street. With contributions from Kevin Crossley-Holland, Christopher Logue, Jeff Nuttall, George MacBeth, Edward Lucie-Smith, and stills from "Juicy Movie," a film by Barry Hall & Tom Raworth. 400 copies issued as invitation/programmes for the event, with 100 more numbered and signed.

George MacBeth, The Screens, Turret Books, 1967

February 1967
George MacBeth
The Screens
10 x 7 3/4" 200 copies of which 100 numbered and signed. 6 sheets of Canson cover, each a different colour, printed with a poem, then folded to make "doors" in the front with an image printed on the left side. Housed in a sheet of heavy white etching paper, printed, embossed & scored. (Poems inspired by Chinese calligraphy)

Edward Lucie-Smith, Heureux Qui, comme Ulysse, Turret Books, 1966

December 1967
Edward Lucie-Smith
'Heureux Qui, Comme Ulysse...'
8 1/4 x 6" 500 copies, 100 numbered & signed. Three-colour broadside on Glastonbury cream laid paper, tipped into yellow cardstock folder with what appears to be a Flaxman drawing of Greek sculpture on the cover. Caslon type with Cochin italic. Display in 24' Recherché caps in red and green.

***

Note: Anselm Hollo's The Man in the Treetop Hat, published by Turret, was printed by Hall & Breyer in June 1968. Michael McClure's broadside, "Childhood memories are like the smallness of Keats' words..." also appeared in 1968. Other significant Turret publications were Jonathan Williams' The Lucidities, with drawings by John Furnival (Turret, 1967), Henry Miller & Alfred Perles' What are You Going to Do about Alf? (Turret, 1971), Lucie-Smith's A Garland from the Greek (Christmas, 1971), and Beasthood by Bryn Griffiths, with photographs by Pip Benveniste (Turret, 1972), which were all printed at Trigram Press.

Refs: Rathna Ramanathan, "English little presses, book design and production. A Study of five London publishers, 1945-1979," Doctoral dissertation, University of Reading, Dept of Typography & Graphic Communication, October 2006.

Shamoon Zamir: "Bringing the World to Little England: Cape Editions, Cape Goliard and Poetry in the Sixties. An Interview with Nathaniel Tarn. With an afterword by Tom Raworth," in E. S. Shaffer, ed., in "Literary Devolution." Comparative Criticism, vol 19, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 263-286,

[Joe McCann] "Bernard Stone's Books," Maggs Bros Ltd Catalogue 1456, with a foreword by Barry Miles, London, 2012
__________

Tom Raworth Working Bibliography Part II. A Checklist of the Goliard Press (1965-7).

Tom Raworth Working Bibliography Part I: A Checklist Of Matrix Press (London 1961-4). 
__________
__________

A Checklist Of Goliard Press (London 1965–7)

by Alastair Johnston

Tom Raworth Working Bibliography Part II. 

Tom Raworth by Barry Flanagan (from ACT, Trigram Press, 1973)

If Matrix Press can be considered Raworth's incunabular period, the Renaissance flowering of his career as a printer began when he started collaborating with artist Barry Hall at Goliard Press in 1965. 

For those old enough to remember, the "Summer of Love" was a transformative time. As a teenager in England I divided my non-school time between marching with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, rehearsing with my rock band, protesting the Vietnam War and attending poetry readings. They converged occasionally, as when there were benefit readings in support of striking coal miners or teachers -- big rallies featuring poets (Tony Harrison, Tom Pickard, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Barry MacSweeney, Adrian Mitchell, Bob Cobbing, Tony Jackson, et al.) instead of agit-prop rhetoricians. Swinging England was turned on to poetry, and these poets were working class. If they went to college it was art school. If they listened to music it was rock on Radio Luxembourg, late at night. In 1965 the Wholly Communion event at the Royal Albert Hall featured Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti from the USA, and many European poets reading their poetry to a packed house. Christopher Logue, Adrian Mitchell and the Scots novelist Alex Trocchi also read, showing that Britain was producing powerful performance poets. I was most impressed with Mitchell and the Austrian concrete poet Ernst Jandl.

Within a few years the younger generation of British poets had infiltrated the establishment, so regulars on the poetry circuit like Logue, Patten, Pickard and Spike Hawkins stood up alongside Basil Bunting, Hugh MacDiarmid, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and William Plomer to read the poetry of Ezra Pound at the gala anniversary of the Poetry Society in 1969. I think it was at the Royal Festival Hall. Pound was too frail to attend but sent a note and then his works were delivered by the superb performers on stage including Bunting, Logue, Smith and Pickard.

More Americans came through Britain to read and some stayed: Jack Hirschman and David Meltzer because they were friends with expatriate printer Asa Benveniste at Trigram Press (established in London in 1965 and publisher of many of the same writers as Raworth, including Hirschman, Heliczer, Hollo, Meltzer and Raworth himself); others like the young Tom Clark to attend university (Raworth recalls, "I think he was a student of Jeremy [Prynne]'s at Cambridge, as Andrew Crozier was. They were at Essex probably doing their postgraduate stuff and almost certainly because of Donald Davie whose intention was to make the Essex literature department more interesting than Cambridge."). Clark stayed to ridicule the establishment of George MacBeth, Edward Lucie Smith, Peter Porter and Ted Hughes (in his 1979 roman à clef, Who is Sylvia?). Anselm Hollo was actively involved in the scene in London, bringing manuscripts to the press. He and Raworth would be joined with John Esam in the Trigram Press book Haiku, 1968.

So Outburst had set in motion a whole trans-Atlantic migration, not only of writing, but of writers. Charles Olson came through: Raworth found it hard to take the endless monologue. Ginsberg and Corso were caught smoking hash on a train to Newcastle and told the guard they were smoking Turkish cigarettes (at the time Turkish cigarettes contained 1% hashish, as I discovered in Istanbul). Through the American publisher of Jargon, Jonathan Williams (who had come to England for a year), Raworth met Barry Hall. The meeting of Raworth and Hall brought the work to a new artistic level.

Announcement for a show of Barry Hall's paintings at the Batman Gallery, San Francisco, 1961

Raworth's partner, Barry Hall (born in Westminster, 1933), was a commercial engraver (having served a 7-year apprenticeship to learn the trade) and an artist. When he died in 1995, Raworth wrote his obituary for The Independent. He had studied at St Martin's School of Art in London, before going to San Francisco in 1961 for a year, where he exhibited at Batman Gallery and met the poets & painters of the San Francisco renaissance (Batman's publicity was printed by Dave Haselwood at Auerhahn Press). He returned to England, and, as Raworth wrote, "we co-founded the Goliard Press in 1964 in a ramshackle stable in West Hampstead, and hand-set, printed and published books by Elaine Feinstein, Charles Olson, Aram Saroyan and others: many for the first time in Britain. Other small presses benefited from our skills: we printed the first edition of Basil Bunting's Briggflatts for Fulcrum, and produced many volumes for Bernard Stone's Turret Books.

"Goliard was so successful that in 1967, through the efforts of Nathaniel Tarn and Tom Maschler, it came under the Jonathan Cape umbrella as Cape Goliard. Hall continued working, producing a list that included Neruda, Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn, J .H. Prynne, Gael Turnbull and Ted Berrigan, until one day, bored, he left the rollers halfway across a page of type, walked out, and went to America.

"For many years he was on the move. Breeding quarter-horses and making movies in New Mexico. Writing scripts in London. Filming Dale Herd's Dreamland Court in Los Angeles. Recovering from a severe illness in Newport, Rhode Island. Making a television film on Kerouac. Working again (briefly) as an engraver in London. Then he visited Africa, fell in love with Kenya, and moved there."

Elsewhere, Raworth wrote about the beginnings of Goliard: "In 1964 I met Barry Hall, one of the only two people I've ever been able to work with, and we decided to start Goliard. We got a larger press, a guillotine, a variety of type and set up in a cobble-floored stable off the Finchley Road. We worked together for a few years, then when Jonathan Cape wanted to get involved, I left."

Goliard Press books, London, 1965-7

Further light was shed on Goliard (and the difficulty of making a living as a small press) in a discussion about British poet Jeff Nuttall, when Raworth recalled, "Val, Barry and Jackie Hall and I ran into Jeff forty years ago at a party (home-grown marijuana, laboratory-made drink, candles and Dylan Thomas records). He asked us if we knew anything about a William Burroughs someone had told him of. We met a few times, he began to do My Own Mag, we were evicted, stayed for a while with the Hollos, then in December 1964 moved to High Barnet (a flat, strangely, in the street where the party had been). Jeff and Jane (and those four Calder-invisible children) lived a few streets away, and as Jeff passed our flat twice a day to and from his teaching job we spent quite a lot of time together. He got involved with Trocchi and the Sigma stuff, Barry and I struggled with Goliard. I wonder if anyone else remembers Priscilla and The Woolies. We saw one another less frequently after I left Goliard and we moved to Colchester: but we stayed in touch then, and through our years in the USA."

When I wrote commenting on the prolific output of Goliard during this time, Raworth replied: "How it mounts up. I'd really forgotten the amount of stuff we did in those basically couple of years before the Cape. I wonder we had time to drink and take drugs."

Goliard Press Checklist

1965 Broadside

Tom Raworth
Weapon Man
15 copies. Light olive green paper printed in black on front of folded sheet.
Notes: the image was reused from the cover of Outburst 2 where it was credited to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (It is a reversed image from Hans von Gersdorff, Fieldbook of Wound Surgery, Strasburg, 1519).

TR: The first item ever printed by Goliard was the small broadside Weapon Man, a thing of mine I wrote in the stick...

1966 Broadside
Tom Raworth
Continuation
Illustration by Barry Hall. 15 3/4 x 9 1/8" Cochin type
Handset, printed and published ... in an edition of 150, 25 copies numbered and signed, plus 15 copies printed on handmade Japanese paper.

Books

September 1965

Michael Horovitz
Nude Lines for Larking in Present Night Soho
7 3/4 x 6 1/5" 8 pp bond paper, stapled into flesh-colored (Caucasian) textured card stock. 36' Verona type on cover, four different text types.
Colophon:
Designed and printed by Barry Hall and Tom Raworth
Published in an edition of 160 copies in September 1965
Copyright Goliard Press  10a Fairhazel Gardens  London NW6
Note: (first book of the press).

TR: The first little booklet was Michael Horovitz' "Nude Lines for Larking in Present Night Soho". Nude was from mis-reading his writing and should have been "Rude". As far as I remember I did all the setting and it was all letterpress.

1965
Anselm Hollo
The Claim
10 1/4 x 5 1/8" 8 pages, sewn into plain beige covers with a printed dustjacket on speckled Japanese paper; yellow tissue endpapers.
Set in 12 point Goudy Old Face. Much better typesetting and printing than the preceding work. 150 copies of which 50 signed & numbered. Cover display in 36' Verona type. The image is a reproduction of a medieval woodblock from the Rosarium Philosophorum (1550) repeated 5 times in red.

Note:
 T.R. There was probably some nice japanese paper from time to time..
A.J. yes, cover of the claim by anselm. my copy signed "to Barry & Jacqui from Anselm" with a poem added, $8 thanks to peter [howard]
T.R.:  i think I have a rare unsigned one somewhere

1966 July
Charles Olson
West
9 7/8 x 6 1/2" 18 pp laid paper, sewn into coated paper with glassine frontispiece portrait and Japanese paper overlay, glued-on wrappers of brown Japanese paper. Title in 36' Verona type, text in 12' Caslon with Cochin italic.
Colophon: "This book has been set in Caslon Old | Face and printed by hand on Glastonbury | antique laid paper at the Goliard Press, | 10a Fairhazel Gardens, London NW6 | in July 1966. This edition consists of | 500 copies in japanese Nagaragawa | wrappers and 25 copies hard-bound, | numbered and signed by the author."

Notes: The frontispiece portrait of Red Cloud (supplied by Ken Irby), printed on glassine, has a guard sheet of translucent Japanese paper which seems to have its own "red cloud" in the paper.
Slight notes, with Duncan & Blaser manifestations intercut into scribblings from the Report of the Board of Indian Commissions (1870) etc., as the Big O says in the preface: "So I have here a much larger story than would appear."

TR: Olson bombarded us with letters about West: move this here, move that there, do this, do that -- until we stopped opening the mail, did the book the way we thought, and on publication received an ecstatic telegram of thanks.
(Second printing 1969)

1966
Elaine Feinstein
In a Green Eye
Photographs by Al Vandenberg
9 3/4 x 6 1/2" Cover title in Westminster type, perfectbound in coated wrappers. 36 pp of wove paper. Text in Caslon O. S. with headings in Verona.
500 copies on chromo; 30 numbered & signed.

Note: Today, Feinstein is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature: this was her first book. She began writing poetry influenced by Pound, Williams and the Objectivists, and was one of the first women to attend Cambridge University. Olson wrote her a letter defining "breath prosody" in which he famously addressed her as "Dear Mister Feinstein." Subsequently she wrote numerous poems, novels and five biographies, as well as plays and translations from the Russian. Vandenberg was a successful London photographer.

Not seen: Broadside prospectus, "For the baiting children in my son's school class..." 150 copies, of which 25 numbered and signed. Drawings by Johannes de Cuba. Pale tan paper printed in grey, browns, yellow-green and black.

Christopher Logue
Selections from a Correspondence between an Irishman and a Rat
3 3/4 x 6 1/2" 16 pp Glastonbury paper sewn into tan covers with a green wrapper printed in green and black. Poem set in 30' Placard Condensed (Monotype 1958). Cover drawing of rat & potato (?) by Hall(?)
150 copies*

*most destroyed by Barry Hall after a dispute with Logue. One of the worst situations a publisher can be in is to have a falling-out with the author after the book is printed. This happened famously with Jonathan Williams and Asa Benveniste over Imaginary Postcards at Trigram Press, and with Jack Spicer's circle over his Heads of the Town up to the Aether published by Auerhahn Press.

1966 broadside
Bill Butler
Twenty-four Names of God
large poster, tan paper printed in black and orange. Limitation unknown.



1966 broadside
Ron Padgett
Sky
white cardstock, folded to 9 x 4 1/8". A prose poem. Cochin type with a square of blue tissue paper glued on. 325 copies, of which 25 numbered and signed.

1966 Christmas
Aram Saroyan
Sled Hill Voices: 13 poems
4 7/8 x 6 1/2" Drawings by R. G. Dienst
30 pp wove paper sewn into plain card covers with a Japanese paper wrapper. Set in 24' Cochin italic, printed in multi colors. Imprint in 11' Engravers Roman. Drawings printed on tipped-in colored papers. 450 copies. Note: Minimalist pantheism from the minimalist poet. The author's first book.

1967 January
Tom Raworth
The Relation Ship
Illustrated by Barry Hall.

10 x 6 1/2" Set in Goudy Old Face
60 pp (unpaginated) of Glastonbury laid paper includes 3 illustrations and 3 additional leaves tipped in. (These tip-ins might have been conceived as tissue guards except they come after the images.) The images were offset-printed, then blind-embossed and hand-coloured. 450 hardbound of which 50 signed & numbered, plus 6 specially bound. Cover title printed in gold Westminster type on glassine wrapper.

Note: The major work of the press. Raworth's first book, and winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize from the Poetry Society of London. Second edition, without monoprints, Cape Goliard/ Grossman 1969

1967 February
Tom Clark
The Emperor of the Animals. A play.
6 3/8 x 4 3/4"
16 pp of wove paper sewn into yellow cover stock printed in brown and green with Ultra Bodoni caps. Set in Cochin italic, Goudy Old Face and Westminster (for stage directions). Colophon: 300 copies of which the first 35 are numbered and signed by the author and all other members of the original production, and contain two illustrations of the sets.

Note: This play was first performed privately in London on January 14th, 1967, with the following cast:
Edward -- Edward Dorn
Benedict -- Robert Creeley
Howard -- Charles Olson
Helga -- Panna Grady
Janet -- Helene Dorn
Norma -- Valarie Raworth
Sets & costumes by Barry & Jackie Hall
Music by Tom Raworth
Directed by Tom Clark

Note: Clark doesn't recall whether there were signed copies or not. He adds, "As to the details of production, that remains a secret between me and Tom R."

1967 March
Zoltan Farkas
The Baltimore Poems
7 1/4 x 6 1/4"
20 pp of laid paper with tan Glastonbury laid endpapers, sewn into white card covers with Japanese paper wrappers. Printed cover title. 500 copies of which 35 are signed & numbered. Set in Goudy Old Face. Illustrations by Richard O. Tyler.

Sheet of coated stock bound in with sepia photo of the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe (in Baltimore). Note: Anselm Hollo brought the manuscript to the press.

1967 broadside
Jack Hirschman
Wasn't It Like This?
12 1/2 x 7 1/2" 100 copies printed, 25 numbered & signed. 3 colours. Westminster type. The famous Flammarion engraving (from 1888) used here, was also used by the UFO club and for the spring 1967 benefit for International Times in London, that featured Pink Floyd, Lennon & Ono, Soft Machine and other bands. The event known as the 14-hour Technicolour Dream was held at the Alexandra Palace.

1967
Jack Hirschman
London Seen Directly
4 x 6 1/2" 16 pp sewn into yellow card cover with green Japanese paper wrapper, title printed in red. Text set in large Westminster printed in brown with yellow ornaments on each page. Re-uses Hall's rose from "Continuation" broadside.
150 copies of which 50 signed & numbered.

Note: The design shows the art nouveau influence which was big in the Swinging London/ Carnaby Street era.

1967
Various
"before your very eyes!" (cover title)
12 x 8"
Images lithographed in brown ink, printed on white card stock and stapled. Handset in Cochin and 24' Westminster Old Style.
Price: 7s 6d     $1     5 NF   "Unsolicited manuscripts will be burned without ceremony."

A magazine anthology, larger and more ambitious graphically than Outburst. Back cover reprints Corso's drawing of Nelson's column from Hollo's History. Hall's image of rat & potato overprinted to create abstract glyph with another splatter-like illustration. Contributions from Olson, Aram Saroyan, Hollo, Hirschman, Raworth, Ron Padgett (on his Max Jacob kick), & James Koller. "The pictures are from Rose Birth by William Jahrmarkt." (Billy Jahrmarkt was the proprietor of the Batman Gallery in San Francisco, which had shown Hall's work, and was the key location for the artists of the Beat Generation in North Beach and the Fillmore district. Unfortunately he was a heroin addict.)

(Note: Part III will contain Goliard Press jobwork).
__________

Tom Raworth Working Bibliography Part I: A Checklist Of Matrix Press (London 1961-4).
__________ 
__________