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talking to Norman Warwick<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been a bibliophile for as long as I can remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My face, and mind, buried in books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was a collector too; stamps in my early years then, as a teenager, the autographs of footballers and cricketers, then records and, all the while, books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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If I found an author I really liked then I\u2019d read everything I could find by them. In my mid 30\u2019s I began reading and collecting the work of John Updike and Raymond Carver. When I had the trade editions I started to see the limited edition book and broadside publications and began to collect those too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Updike and Carver had a couple of small press publishers in common; Herb Yellin\u2019s \u2018Lord John Press\u2019 in California and William B Ewert who, for a day job, worked as a librarian in New Hampshire. Ewert\u2019s were, I thought, the more attractive publications. They were letterpress printed with wood engraved illustrations and very nice bindings. Ewert also published work by, amongst others, Seamus Heaney. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d been reading, enjoying and collecting Simon Armitage\u2019s work since the early nineties when I first picked up a copy of Zoom and, in the first poem, \u2018Snow Joke\u2019, read about the \u201c\u2026.two pretty girls in the top grade at Werneth Prep\u201d. My sisters had gone to Werneth Prep so that got me interested. I learned that Simon is about my age, lives not too far away from me and somehow had made an interesting life for himself with his facility with words. I\u2019d also read that, as a probation officer, he\u2019d worked in my home town of Rochdale though, thankfully, I was never one of his clients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t feel like I had a particularly interesting life working, as I did, as an Implementer of Payroll Systems and, after turning 50 and having a much needed kidney transplant in 2012, I decided that I needed a hobby that would take me to new places and meet new people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/photo-2-updike.jpg\")
One of the first things I did was to book a trip to Boston, Massachusetts to attend the John Updike Society conference where academics and \u2018ordinary\u2019 readers gathered to hear erudite papers delivered by professors and to visit sites associated with the author. We even visited the house Updike lived in with his first wife Mary. Mary had re-purchased the house when she remarried and she welcomed the society into the house which had featured in many of Updike\u2019s \u2018Maples Stories\u2019. We also visited the Houghton Library at Harvard where the Updike archive is held and I had a few too many glasses of wine with Updike\u2019s eldest son David. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before arriving in the States I\u2019d arranged to visit John Kristensen\u2019s Firefly Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts. William Ewert had employed the services of John to print and bind his publications of Updike, Carver, Heaney and others. John graciously showed me round and when I said that, as a hobby, I was interested in doing what Ewert had done he offered one piece of advice – \u201cDon\u2019t do it\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve never been very good at taking advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I\u2019d seen Simon Armitage\u2019s Stanza Stones project. The Rain Stone stands above my home town and I\u2019d heard Simon read the poems at the launch event at the site of the Mist Stone high above Oxenhope, near the Bront\u00eb Parsonage on a bitterly cold May evening in 2012. Walking back down Nab Hill after the event I introduced myself to Simon and we chatted about football as the Champions League final was on the TV that night and my son had been incredulous that I should miss it for a poetry event. I had taken some of my Armitage collection, including some of the very early publications, to get signed by him. I attended a couple more of his events that year and made a point of speaking to him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aside from the early poetry pamphlets, \u2019The Distance Between Stars\u2019, \u2018Human Geography\u2019, \u2018Around Robinson\u2019 and \u2018The Walking Horses\u2019 published by Wide Skirt, Smith\/Doorstop and Slow Dancer respectively I knew that Simon had done a couple of limited edition Fine Press publications of individual poems with Clarion Press in the mid nineteen nineties. The Anaethestist with lithographs by Valarii Mishim was an attractive book. Five Eleven Ninety Nine was, in my opinion, a less successful production with the text printed in small, red italic and in three variants with each form having a different amount of colouring on Toni Goffe\u2019s illustrations for the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was also aware that Simon\u2019s Canadian publisher \u2018Anansi\u2019 had commissioned a lovely, limited edition letterpress printed chapbook of four of the poems from \u2018Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Corduroy Kid\u2019 from Hans van Eijk\u2019s Bonnefant Press of the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was evident to me that Simon seemed happy to work with smaller publishers such as Smith\/Doorstop, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Hebden Bridge\u2019s Pomona (run by Mark Hodkinson another Rochdalian who has written extensively about \u2018The Dale\u2019 as, like me, he\u2019s a regular at Spotland) alongside his Faber publications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As part of my post-transplant attempts to get involved in the book world I\u2019d started to volunteer at Manchester Literature Festival and at an event in October 2012 I asked Simon if I could possibly publish a \u2018Fine Press\u2019 edition of the Stanza Stones poems. I fully expected him to say \u2018no, don\u2019t be silly\u2019 but he agreed to meet me in a pub and asked me to bring along some examples of what I was thinking of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I guessed that Simon would be aware of the sort of thing I wanted to do as he\u2019d have known about Ted Hughes\u2019 Rainbow Press publications of work by Plath, Heaney, Thom Gunn and, of course, Hughes\u2019 own poems with their illustrations by Leonard Baskin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the pub I showed him the Ewert publications and quoted Updike\u2019s statement that – \u201cA book is beautiful in its relation to the human hand, to the human eye, to the human mind and to the human spirit\u201d – and he said \u2018Ok, why not?\u2019 I then thought, what the heck do I do now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I did do was to find an excellent letterpress printer, John Grice of the Evergreen Press, who guided me through the process and put me in touch with a wood engraver, Hilary Paynter who he\u2019d worked with before. Hilary and I went to view all of the poems in situ on a cold, wet weekend in April 2013. Not too long afterwards seven wonderful engravings were welcomed by my doormat. Hilary had done one for each poem and another as a frontispiece for the book. John chose appropriate paper, Zerkall, and a Centaur typesetting, I was clear that I didn\u2019t want anything too ostentatious for the edition. I visited The Fine Book Bindery in Northamptonshire with John, and chose the colours of the leather and cloth for the binding. In September 2013 \u2018In Memory of Water\u2019 was published with the six poems beautifully complemented by Hilary\u2019s engravings and additional text by Simon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The book came in three versions all signed by Simon and the artist; The standard, numbered version; a slipcased, lettered version and a fully leather bound version that is housed in a solander box which also contained a portfolio of broadsides of each poem with its accompanying image. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not long afterwards Simon offered me the seven poems that were to be broadcast on a BBC Culture Show Special called \u2018The Great War: An Elegy\u2019. Of course I accepted the offer but due to the fact that I still, at that stage, had many unsold copies of \u2018In Memory of Water\u2019 on my bookshelves I cut the edition size for \u2018Considering The Poppy\u2019 to just over one hundred copies as opposed to the one hundred and eighty I had produced for the Stanza Stones poems. When the programme was subsequently broadcast, though, viewers found my website and the full edition sold out very quickly. The engravings for this edition were done by Chris Daunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought that, if I were to continue publishing that I couldn\u2019t publish only Simon\u2019s work so I started to ask other poets including Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley and Sin\u00e9ad Morrissey. Some of my publications have been successful both financially and \u2018artistically\u2019. All have been interesting for me to do and they\u2019ve taken me to some places that I never thought that I would visit including the Academicians Room at the Royal Academy, Antony Gormley\u2019s studio, Belfast Hebrew Congregation Synagogue on Holocaust Memorial Day earlier this year and to Lille in France where I gave a presentation at the inaugural Armitage conference attended by professors and students from across the continent. Some have been beautiful books that I\u2019ve, so far, failed to find buyers for. I tend to think that only one of the books is an aesthetic disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After \u2018Considering the Poppy\u2019 I did another couple of books with Simon. \u2018Waymarkings\u2019 features the eight poems Simon published in his two \u2018walking books\u2019. \u2018Exit the Known World\u2019 was the first publication of the six poems written for a commission by Northumbria National Park. The commission was to write site specific poems for locations throughout the park. Simon recorded the poems and they were initially only accessible if you followed the directions on an App on your mobile device. When you arrived within two metres or so at your destination the App played Simon\u2019s recordings of the poems. When you left the particular destination the recording could no longer be heard. Both \u2018Waymarkings’ and \u2018Exit the Known World\u2019 featured additional text by Simon and wood engravings by Hilary Paynter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simon likes to be involved in the detail of the publication but, thankfully in my case, isn\u2019t quite as fastidious as Updike whose desire to be involved in many aspects of his fine press publications caused a number of difficulties for the printers and publishers. When he offered me \u2018Considering The Poppy\u2019 he did say to me \u201cbut make sure you involve me more than you did with the first book\u201d. In my naivety I had in essence done the fully involved myself in the design of the book with my printer and binder without seeking even a nod of approval from Simon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simon has on occasion rejected some of the images the artists have completed but generally he has been happy with suggestions of the artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enitharmon, a specialist publishing house in London had published three of Simon\u2019s books \u2018Out of the Blue\u2019, \u2018Stanza Stones\u2019 and \u2018Still\u2019 and they have produced attractive, limited edition hardbacks to supplement the trade editions of these books. A number of people have compared my publications with Enitharmon\u2019s and, whilst they were an undoubted influence for me, my spare bedroom set-up doesn\u2019t really compare with the very nice shop they, until recently, had in Bloomsbury. As Enitharmon\u2019s editions are not letterpress printed then I, personally, do not view them as Fine Press editions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In mid 2016 Simon asked me if I would like to work on a book with him and Antony Gormley. I didn\u2019t have to consider the offer very long before I accepted. This began a rather tortuous process to bring the book to publication. After some time Antony provided about 70 drawings or \u2018scratchings\u2019 as he called them for Simon\u2019s poems that had been published in \u2018The Unaccompanied\u2019. For a number of reasons the Armitage \/ Gormley book took three years to develop before \u2018Gymnasium\u2019 was published in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My next publication with Simon, which should launch in late summer this year, is to be called \u2018Tract\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Tract\u2019 is based on Simon\u2019s text of Virgil\u2019s Georgics previously published by Enitharmon under the title \u2018Still\u2019. In that publication which was commissioned as part of the \u201914-18Now’ Cultural Programme to mark the centenary of the First World War, Simon\u2019s text was accompanied by aerial and reconnaissance pictures of the conflict\u2019s landscapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Tract\u2019 will feature twelve images by Royal Academician Hughie O\u2019Donoghue who has portrayed derelict, abandoned dwellings in County Mayo, Ireland to complement the text. I\u2019d met Hughie at an art show in London a few years ago. I knew that he\u2019d worked on an Enitharmon publication with Seamus Heaney and when I showed him one of my publications he expressed interest in working with me. When he discovered Simon\u2019s publication of \u2018Still\u2019 he said that he\u2019d like to work with that text. Simon, Hughie and I met in London to discuss ideas and we saw the finished paintings in autumn last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2018 I bought a copy of Michael Longley\u2019s selected prose and one night read the following in the book;<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201c\u2026 I didn\u2019t retire: I quit my job which I\u2019d done seriously for two decades. I now think that, apart from the privilege of working with artists, ninety per cent of the time I spent in the office was a waste of time, a waste of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael \u2018quit\u2019 when he was 51. I was 57 when I quit my \u2018day job\u2019 to concentrate on my publishing efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m currently working on publications with poets Michael Symmons Roberts, Alice Oswald and Michael Longley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I started my hobby I had no experience in either the production of a physical book nor the business of trying to find buyers for that book but, and despite that, Simon gave me a chance and I\u2019m very grateful to him for giving me that opportunity to create a more interesting life for myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FINE LINES FOR FINE PRESS POETRY By Andrew Moorhouse I\u2019ve been a bibliophile for as long as I can remember. My face, and mind, buried in books. I was a collector too; stamps in my early years then, as a teenager, the autographs of footballers and cricketers, then records and, all the while, books. If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aata","category-literary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1549"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1560,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions\/1560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}