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 -