New Books :: 2009

What's next for 2010...

With the release of Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst's Anatomy for the Artist, our final release for 2009, production is now underway on two projects for this year. A few details are available on the News page, but check back here a bit later in the summer for more info...

Anatomy for the Artist

Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst

5.75" × 9.75", 28pp. 2009.
$75 | $60 to subscribers.

Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst's Anatomy for the Artist is many things at once. A suite of poems with accompanying illustrations, it follows the tradition of ut pictura poesis. As meditations on the relationship between art and poetry, they are sophisticated and yet these poems do much more as well. They consider the ingredients of our lives: phone calls to mothers, a love affair, line-ups, cooking. The suppleness of bodies, how we imagine them, how we depict them, how we desire others, how this becomes an art: this is the meat of Hiemstra-van der Horst's suite.

The text is hand-set in 14pt Perpetua with lettering by the artist for display (printed from polymer). The illustrations are giclée prints from an Epson 3800 Pro using pigment-based archival inks. Page stock is Mohawk Superfine, with a flyleaf and wrapper of handmade cotton from India. Text printed letterpress in 2 colours throughout.

Photos: Images of the book in production here...

Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst is a visual artist and writer who lives in Surrey, British Columbia. Her poems have appeared in several Canadian journals including The Antigonish Review, The Malahat Review and Carousel. Her first collection of poems, Excerpts from Gerald, God and the Chickens (Frog Hollow Press) was published in 2008. Her artwork has been exhibited across Canada, and can be viewed at www.hiemstra-vanderhorst.com

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Against the Hard Angle

Matt Robinson

6.75" × 9.75", 20pp. 2009.
$65 | $52 to subscribers.

It could be said of Matt Robinson’s Against the Hard Angle that truth bends around its object. The poems are direct but leave the reader with a sense that something is unspoken. Spoiled milk, congealed blood from an injury, a workbench. Just when you might think these poems are parochial, Robinson writes of a delay in an airport. There is a range of subject-matter and a range of experience in these poems. And in their understatement, Robinson’s poems feel contemporary. Objects are used to hint at human relationships, relationships perhaps difficult to discuss, haunted by an unspoken pessimism. Everything in here is more than it seems.

The text is hand-set in 14pt Spectrum, with display type printed from polymer. Page stock is Magnani Velata, with a wrapper of handmade cotton by Reg Lissel in Vancouver. Text printed letterpress in 2 colours throughout.

Photos: Images of the book in production here...

matt robinson lives in Halifax, NS, and works as a Residence Life Manager with Dalhousie University. His most recent previous collection is no cage contains a stare that well (ECW, 2005), a full-length volume of hockey poems. Other collections include A Ruckus of Awkward Stacking, which was nominated for the Lampert and ReLit awards, how we play at it: a list, and tracery & interplay. His poems have appeared in anthologies such as The New Canon, Breathing Fire 2, Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada, Exact Fare Only 2, and Landmarks: An Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land. Most recently, Matt has received the Malahat Review Long Poem prize for an earlier version of Against the Hard Angle.

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This (And That Was That)

JonArno Lawson

3.125" × 4.875", 32pp. 2009.
$50 | $40 to subscribers.

This (And That Was That) has just brought in our 5th citation from the Alcuin Society's Annual Awards for Excellence in Book Design.

JonArno Lawson’s poem And That Was That is reminiscent of Robert Creeley's early poetry. In terse and playful lines, a speaker describes a conversation, the subject of which is never stated. Instead the subject is only described as “this” or “that.” The poem’s power lies in the fact that we assume we know what the conversation is about (it’s pretty obvious...“Let’s / give this / another / chance”). Of course, we can all guess, but in the end the only thing that matters is that the conversation happened. That lingering ambiguity is what makes the poem.

The text is hand-set in 14pt Cloister Old Style, with the same from polymer for the wrapper. Page stock, cover and wrapper are Arches Johannot.

Photos: Images of the book in production here...

JonArno Lawson has seven books to his credit, including Black Stars in a White Night Sky, which received the 2007 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry, and a 2008 Moonbeam bronze medal for his book A Voweller’s Bestiary. Lawson’s books for adults include Inklings and Love is an Observant Traveller, as well as his contributions to an ethnography of the Chechen people, The Chechens: A Handbook. He has a book of poetry forthcoming from Kids Can Press in 2010. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.

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