August 15, 2020
Over the years we’ve published some chapbooks here at High Ground. The first one we printed, in 1991, was a small collection of my poems, I Thought I Could See Africa, and I remember how many hours John spent in the print shop, figuring, setting, proofing, collating, and then how I sat at our dining table sewing the pages into their covers. In 1996, I requested that John design and print an edition with his long poem, “Mud Bottom”, one of my favourites, and so he gathered together some other poems for a lovely chapbook titled for that poem. Two years later, I had in mind a series of single-essay chapbooks, digitally printed, with handset cover labels. I chose one of my own essays to practice on, “month of wild berries picking”, and I am very pleased with how it turned out but somehow I didn’t have the time to solicit and produce others in the series. In those years, I’d found my way back to writing after a long quiet period and I guess I simply wanted to concentrate on my own work. The latest chapbook was printed as a gift to friends and family to celebrate my 65th birthday. I wrote the essay in the fall of 2019 after a trip to Ukraine in search of traces of my grandfather’s family and John printed cover labels, a title page, and a colophon in Goudy Old Style. My friend Anik See designed the text and it was printed digitally. My son Forrest resized a beautiful 18th c. map of Bukovyna for the endpapers and I stitched the covers with red silk thread to echo the rushnyk, or ceremonial embroidery, that I loved in Ukraine.
We have small quantities of all these titles available for sale. (theresakishkan at gmail.com) Postage will be charged at cost.
- I Thought I Could See Africa by Theresa Kishkan (1991)
This chapbook was handset in Spectrum and printed in an edition of 100 copies numbered and signed by the author. Text is in black with blue rule ornamentation throughout on Ivory Classic Laid and Silverstone Cover papers. Photocopy of original prospectus available upon request.
letterpress, handsewn, paper, 12 pages $28
- Mud Bottom by John Pass (1996)
This chapbook was handset in Goudy Old Style and printed in an edition of 100 copies numbered and signed by the author. Text and titling is in Rota Brown and Brilliant Blue on Ivory Classic Laid paper under Gainsborough Bramble Cover. Prospectus available upon request.
letterpress, handsewn, paper, 18 pages $35
- month of wild berries picking by Theresa Kishkan (1998)
This chapbook was printed in a limited edition of 50 copies numbered and signed by the author. Text is laser-printed in black. Titling is letterpress in Amazon Green. Papers are Fox River Ivory Text stitched into Gainsborough Bramble Cover. Copies twenty-one through fifty are for sale.
laser & letterpress, handsewn, paper, 20 pages $20
- Museum of the Multitude Village by Theresa Kishkan (2020)
This chapbook was printed in a limited edition of 65 copies, signed by the author. Text is digital in black. Cover label, title page, and colophon are handset and printed in Goudy Old Style, with decorative elements printed in red.
laser and letterpress, handsewn, paper, unpaginated $20
March 26, 2020
I’m slowly adding things to this page. Here’s the information about our Companions Series. Rather than add images of all the broadsheets, why don’t you ask me if there’s one you’re particularly interested in and I’ll photograph it.
The Companions Series: Prospectus
The Companions Series of broadsheets features poems by contemporary poets written in response to poems they have chosen by other poets, printed face to face on classic laid papers using High Ground’s treadle-driven Chandler & Price platen press. Most of the contributors’ poems make their first appearances in print in the Series. Sheets are signed and numbered by the contributors in limited editions of 60. Approximately 40 signed and numbered sets are available for purchase. Each Companions Series set includes 12 broadsheets, as specified below, with additional title sheet and folder.
1. William H. New’s Glossing Footnotes in response to John Clare’s Emmonsail’s Heath In Winter. Handset in Goudy Old Style and Spectrum.
2. Sue Wheeler’s Understory in response to Don McKay’s Stumpage. Handset in Goudy Old Style.
3. Lori Maleea Acker’s An Inner Regard in response to an excerpt from Wallace Stevens’s Things Of August. Handset in Goudy Old Style.
4. Theresa Kishkan’s A Version in response to Sappho’s Fragment 58. Handset in Cloister.
5. Joe Denham’s Abandoned Orchard in response to John Thompson’s Apple Tree. Handset in Goudy Old Style.
6. George McWhirter’s Good Friday, 2003. Driving West Into Point Grey in response to a selection from John Donne’s Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward. Handset in Cloister.
7. Russell Thornton’s A List in response to his translation of Juan Ramon Jimenez’s I Am Not I. Handset in Goudy Old Style.
8. Christopher Patton’s Via Negativa in response to an excerpt from Ezra Pound’s Canto LXXIV. Handset in Cloister.
9. John Pass’s En Route in response to Duncan Campbell Scott’s poem of the same name. Handset in Goudy Old Style.
10. Anik See’s Yes, Give Us Some in response to William Carlos Williams’s This is just to say. Handset in Spectrum.
11. Gillian Wigmore’s Vanderhoof Girls in response to Charles Lillard’s Vanderhoof. Handset in Goudy Old Style and Cloister.
12. Cornelia Hoogland’s After Meeting The Wolf, Red Arrives Home in response to an excerpt from David Harsent’s Marriage. Handset in Spectrum.
The Companions Series sets are available for purchase at $180 CAD. Some singles are available at $25 each.
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I don’t know why I haven’t thought to add a page featuring the work John (mostly) and I do with our two platen presses. I’m going to work on a list of materials printed over the years as well as those chapbooks and broadsheets still available for sale. For example, we printed several folios of contemporary poets, one of them called the Companion Series, in which we asked poets to respond to the work of another poet, printing both poems as a single sheet.
In the meantime, here’s a link to a post I wrote about a talk John gave to the Alcuin Society in 2012.
...Theresa Kishkan 