Small editions

Shining Sister (2022)

This is an elegy consisting of thirteen poems with full-page titles painted by John Rowlands-Pritchard. Size 15x21cm. Stab-binding with blue flysheets. Edition of 26 A to Z. Recycled paper and card.

Searching for Stetson (2022)

My response to The Waste Land in its centenary year. The sequence focuses on a quest for the enigmatic figure of Stetson: wanted dead or alive. Each poem jumps off from one of Eliot’s lines. These pieces range from linked sonnets to monologue, fantasy and prophecy, from history to ghost-story. They are inhabited by a cast of characters as diverse as Marconi and St Peter, John Keats and Jeremy Thorpe, a Victorian murderesss and Carlos the Jackal, my Great-aunt Doris and the legendary Celtic King Bran. Moods range from playful to macabre. Context leaps from 1920s London to distant places and times both past and present. Searching for Stetson is intricate and mysterious.

The front cover is graced by the lettering of John Rowlands-Pritchard. 28 pages, pamphlet-sewn,15x21cm. Edition of 50. Made from recycled paper and card.

Broomfield, October (2022)

A single-poem micro-chapbook recording a visit to Fyne Court. Size10.5x15cm, recycled paper and card, six double pages folded at the foredge. The back cover has lettering by John Rowlands-Pritchard. Edition of 25.

Postcards from Lost Time (2021)

My life in 50 tercets. 28 pages, recycled paper and card, pamphlet-sewn,15cm square. Edition of 50.

The Flossie-Raptor and other birds (2021)

A celebration of birds. Real birds, imaginary birds, and a hen that I loved immoderately. 36 pages, pamphlet-sewn,15x21cm. Edition of 50. Made from recycled paper and card.

August Postcards (2020)

A chapbook of fourteen poems written by Beau Beausoleil during the month of August 2020 and published in October of that year. The structure is known as the Australian reverse piano-hinge binding. The text and cover and removable central postcard are printed on Elliepoo paper/card, available from the Green Stationery Company in Bath. I still have a couple of copies in stock, price £15 including UK postage.

Harness of Bone

Twenty-seven new poems from San Francisco poet and activist Beau Beausoleil. The cover image by Somerset artist Fiona Hingston beautifully matches the wintry starkness and clarity of these poems with their themes of heartache, rage and transcendence.

Printed on recycled paper. Hand-bound pamphlet 6″x8.5″, 44 pages, edition of 200.

Price £10/$15 plus p&p at cost.
Inquiries: Americas and Canada: overlandbooks@earthlink.net
UK and rest of world: barleybooks@hotmail.co.uk

Compass

A chapbook from San Francisco poet Beau Beausoleil.
Thirty new poems are printed on ‘Metaphor’ recycled paper and hand-bound.
The cover photo is by Carolyne Charrington.
Edition of 200, July 2016.

Fragments/variations; Moths; Winter Pilgrim

These three small books were made for the exhibition “Holyest Erth” at Glastonbury Abbey in the springtime of 2013. All three texts are poems inspired both by the Abbey and its history and by my e-correspondence with Beau. They are entirely hand-written and hand-painted and/or collaged. All are constructed using variations on Coptic sewing. The edition size is 26, on a scribe-on-demand basis.

Ways to Reach the Open Boat

This A5 chapbook of poems by Beau Beausoleil is the project that occupied me for much of 2012. With the exception of paper-supply problems, kindly solved by the Exotic Paper Company,  the whole process was a joy. Beau is such an inspiring partner to work with. The edition size is 200.

The Pebble in my Pocket.

I used to be a felt-maker. I have always been a picker-up of pebbles. This is a felt pebble containing a short poem. I made two for Christmas presents and one to keep.

What is a Book? Poems for Al-Mutanabbi Street.

This was my big project for 2010-11: a response to the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition’s call to book artists to “re-assemble” some of the “inventory” of the reading material that was lost in the car bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street, the heart of the literary quarter of Baghdad, on 5 March 2007 – an attack on thought and ideas as much as on the 130 people who were killed or injured.

One copy of this book is in the Library of Alexandria, another is in the Jaffé Collection at Florida Atlantic University, two are in touring exhibitions and one is due to be donated to the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad.

Text inkjet-printed and titles letterpress-printed from wooden type on Lana Colours paper. 18-page flutter-book with pomegranate-dyed book-cloth covers. Title stitched on cover. 15x19cm.

Edition of 26 A-Z, non-identical, 2011. All profits sent to Medecins Sans Frontiers.  Copies T, U, W, X, Y and Z are still available at £25 each.

Below: Thinking of You: poems by Bridport Prize runner-up Clare Diprose. Designed by barleybooks,  printed by St Andrews Press in Wells, hand-bound as an A5 pamphlet with “Island” binding (knotted cord with no stitching). 40 pages, 29 poems, 13 illustrations. Edition of 100, made in 2010.

Below: Mackerel Pate: photographs by Claire Spargo-Williams and poems by Jane Williams. Designed and edited by barleybooks, printed by St Andrews Press, hand-stitched. 32 pages, 14 photographs, 13 poems. Edition of 100, made  in 2010.

Below: Four Pips, a long poem about Persephone and the pomegranate, printed on Elliepoo paper and pamphlet-stitched into a hard cover. The book-cloth was made from silk dyed with pomegranate, madder and logwood and embellished with gilding paste through a stencil. The book is 15cm square and was made in an edition of 20 for an exhibition called “Pomegranate” in Glastonbury Abbey in 2010.

Her mother ran to find/ only a broken bowl, still rocking/ scattered peas, a broken necklace

Below: Shibori Moon, a six-page A6 flutter-book.

Stained fingers finick at the tight wet knots/draw out a thread dotted with blue and white …

The text, a sonnet describing a few minutes of the process of indigo vat-dyeing to achieve the pattern reproduced on the cover, is printed on pale-blue “hair” paper. The book was made for BLUE, a Somerset Art Weeks exhibition in Frome in 2009.

Below: Recipes from the Lighthouse: A4 Island-bound booklet made for the participants in Rachel Hazell’s 2009 Bookbinding workshop at Bressay Lighthouse.

Below: Hilly Cansdale Poems. 48 pages, 36 poems. Designed and edited by barleybooks,  printed by St Andrews Press,  hand-stitched. Open edition, 2009.

Below: Poems from the Fountain, an anthology for the Fountain Poets of Wells, designed and edited by barleybooks,  printed by St Andrews Press, hand-bound as a simple A5 pamphlet with “Island” binding (knotted cord with no stitching). 25 poems, 44 pages. Blue fly-leaves. Edition of 60, made in 2008.

Below: Winter Wedding, a six-pageA6 flutter-book commissioned by Jane Williams to commemorate her grandson’s wedding. Jane’s poem is printed over a snowflake image on six A6 pages of Elliepoo paper, with a textured card cover. Edition of eight, December 2008.

Below: Yew Tree Carol, a 4-page A6 flutter-book made as a Christmas card for 2008. The text is printed over a yew tree image on Elliepoo paper. Open edition.

Below: Alphabet for Lovers.  A6 Coptic-sewn book printed on Lana papers and sewn with unbleached Irish linen thread. The initials were made by gluing white paper shapes to black card. These were scanned and reduced and given colours to match the coloured text. An experiment that worked! I had a lot of help from book designer James Shurmer with the typography and layout. Thanks Jim!

Edition of 26, lettered A-Z. 2008.

Below: Poems by Jane Williams. Commissioned by Kate Rossetti Hughes and completed in May 2008.  49 poems with 4 illustrations by Jenny Sanders. 80 A4 pages. Indigo blue text on Elliepoo paper, blue fly-leaves. Japanese stab-binding.

Below: Mendip Seasons: A6 book of Haiku printed in indigo-blue on Elliepoo paper. The font is Lithos Light. Blue flyleaves. Japanese 4-hole stab binding, stitched with hand-dyed indigo cotton yarn. Reproduction of a woodcut of mine  on the cover. 20 pages printed one side only.  Edition of 100, 2007.

Below: Star Turn at Westhay. This palm-leaf-type book was made for an exhibition at Glastonbury Rural Life Museum in 2007. It celebrates the winter displays by the flocks of innumerable starlings in the Westhay/Shapwick Heath area of Somerset – once seen, never forgotten. The text is printed in Lithos Light on watercolour-painted Indian rag-paper.

The book is folded in a handmade box.  Size: closed 20 x 7.5 x 1.5, open 20 x  54cm.  Edition of five, non-identical.

Below: Walking and Watching and Woods and Water. These two books were made to accompany an exhibition of paintings by Judith Yarrow to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). They contain reproductions of Judith’s paintings and essays by Shirley Toulson.  Both A5 stab-bound books were made in an edition of 25 in 2005, and have since been commercially printed perfect-bound in editions of 500.

Below: Warp, written in October 2006, during and after a performance of Julian Grant and Hattie Naylor’s Odysseus Unwound by Tete a Tete opera company, Croma Chamber Ensemble and five Shetland spinners and knitters, in the decayed magnificence of the Alexandra Palace Theatre.

Eleven poems and two decorations. Red flyleaves. Translucent protective cover. Pamphlet-sewn A5 booklet printed on Elliepoo paper. Edition of 100, 2006.

Fill the shuttle/ Dress the loom/ Set the warp/ Begin again

Below: left/right.  A motorcycle accident and a mediaeval French saint, eye-surgery and a megalith, symmetry and incompleteness, an imaginary twin lost and found …

Seven poems, ten left-handed drawings and a photograph. A5 pamphlet-sewn booklet with red flyleaves in an Indian rag-paper cover. Edition of 100, 2005.

this/ standing stone/ around which/ the young oaks/ keep their distance

Below: A Walk in the Quantocks.

At Paradise Farm where the tarmac ends/a narrow track of stones and mud begins …

A5 eight-page pamphlet-sewn booklet. Two poems and two photographs printed on Elliepoo paper. Coloured flyleaves.  Edition of 100, 2005.

Below: The Three Princesses and the Golden Goose. A5 booklet, stab-binding, edition of 100.

A doodle led to a quilt, which led to a title, which led to a story, which led to a book. It was my first quilt and my first editioned book. Both were made for a touring exhibition, “Jubilation”, to mark the Queen’s golden jubilee in 2002.