Coracle Press ~ Ireland
(Simon Cutts & Erica Van Horn)

Bookworks by Simon Cutts
Bookworks by Erica Van Horn
Bookworks by Susan Howe

A Sampler of Smaller Publications from Coracle
By Simon Cutts & Erica Van Horn
Ballybeg, Grange, Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle, 2012. Edition of 125.

26 books published by from 1989 to 2012 in a sturdy 11.75 x 14.5 x 2" card box.

1989 by Erica Van Horn (1991)
8 Old Irish Potatoes by Simon Cutts & Erica Van Horn (2011)
After Brancusi by Simon Cutts & Erica Van Horn(2010)
A Canticle for Fred Sandback by Simon Cutts(2003)
Driven Out, Ditched & Deserted by Jason Clark (2008)
FeuillesAlbumesques by Simon Cutts (1982)
Folded Napkins by Erica Van Horn (2006)
Footnotes to a Manual of Shaker Furniture by Simon Cutts (1984)
Forty Funghi by Harry Gilonis with Erica Van Horn(2008)
The A. Goldsworthy Productions by Simon Cutts (2012)
Italian Lesson No.13: Identificazione by Erica Van Horn (1994, 1989, 1992)
Led Astray by Language by Jiri Valoch et al (2006)
Letters from Brno by Jiri Valoch (2010)
A Little Book of Cockles by Laurie Clark & Carla Phillips (2004)
New Potatoes by Helen O’Leary and Paul Chidester (2005)
Palpa by Simon Cutts (1989)
peuran by Harry Gilonis (2007)
Petits-airs for Margot by Simon Cutts (1987)
Rusted by Erica Van Horn (2004)
Short-cuts by Simon Cutts & Erica Van Horn(2011)
Some Alternatives to Flock by John Bevis(2008)
Some More Words for Living Locally by Erica Van Horn(2011)
Sourcebook by Simon Cutts(2004)
Tin Funnel Jug & Dish by Simon Cutts & Erica Van Horn(2005)
With My Left Hand by Erica Van Horn (2006)
With or Without by Erica Van Horn (2010)

There may be a substitution for an item as there are limited quantities for some editions.

A rich stew from this consistently fascinating and rewarding press.

$275

tree on the outside
By William Minor
Ballybeg, Grange, Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle, 2010.
Edition of 300.

4.5 x 5.875"; 156 pages. Offset printed. Perfect bound. Dark green folding self-wrappers with letterpress titles. Design and production by Simon Cutts.

Minimalist poetry by William Minor. The small book begins with no title page. It launches into the poetry from the first turn of the page.

$15

Black Bob
By Colin Sackett
Clonemel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle, 2008. [Edition of 200.]

4.5 x 6.75"; 124 pages. Letterpress printed. Paper over boards casebound.

A reprint in green covers of the original edition (1989), which had blue covers.

Black Bob, a fictional Border Collie from Selkirk, Scotland, originally appeared in The Dandy, a long-running children's comic, in 1944. This revision of the narrative version of comic art consists of one spread, showing the dog and his master heading three sheep by a rural stream, repeated 63 times. The title information that appears on the front board is repeated but reversed on the back cover.
$80

The Purification of Fagus sylvatica var pendula
By Paul Etienne Lincoln
Ireland / New York: Coracle / Granary, 2005. Edition of 600.

8.5 x 10.25"; 50 pages. Offset printed in two colors. The images are printed on coated stock, the text on Snowden Cartridge. Casebound in Avon midnight blue clothhes.

Colophon: "The Purification of Fagus sylvatica var pendula was produced and first exhibited for the exhibition Crossing the Line, organized by The Queens Museum of Art, June 24 - October 7, 2001."

Paul Etienne Lincoln, from the beginning of The Purification of Fagus sylvatica var pendula: "Situated at the perimeter of Weeping Beech Tree Park in Queens, New York, was a small pavilion looking on to a stump of the oldest weeping beech in America. In 1847 Samuel Bowne Parsons, a Quaker and a nurseryman, purchased a shoot of weeping beech, Fagus sylvatica var pendula, in Belgium, while traveling in search of unusual plants. On his return to the United States he planted the shoot at the site of the stump, then part of Parson's nurseries. Every weeping beech in America is descended from this one tree. Regrettably, the stump is all that remains, as shortly after this venerable tree's 150th anniversary in 1997 it died and was cut down. The tree had, however spawned seven progeny, which still grow in a circle around the original beech."

Granary: "Comprised of text, diagrams, and 50 black and white photographs, The Purification records the series of experiments and performance which detail the afterlife of a specimen of local vegetation. It is emblematic of Lincoln's inquiry into the origin and production of memory and our ethereal relationship to that intangible evidence of our consciousness. In this pursuit, Lincoln has employed diverse forms and themes, ranging from examination of historical figures to detailing anything from New York City infrastructure to 'household' machines that dispense gin-and-tonics (mixed at varying strengths).

"Over the past two decades, Lincoln has committed himself to creating complex installations, recordings and documentation on a wide range of subject matter. The Purification follows his investigation of the weeping beech as a way of detailing the process of examination and history-writing, which is ever shifting and defining the world around us."
$40

The Pig Poems
Three Poems Concerning Larionov's Provincial Life Series
By Spike Hawkins & (this woman) Erica Van Horn
Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle Press, 1999. Edition of 175.

9.5 x 11.75"; 34 pages. Letterpress printed in two colors. Casebound in bookcloth with title, author, and image printed on front board.

Colophon: "These poems were first published in Spike Hawkins' Poems, Tarasque Press, Nottingham 1966."

Spike Hawkins, Liverpudlian poet, uses pigs in the work of Russian impressionist painter Mikhail Larionov as inspiration for three poems - "Target," "Liddled" and "Boiler." Each poem is accompanied by a different image, some version of a thick black ring (a gear? or gears?).

The Pig fell over the upturned
motor car
The Pig fell over the upturned
motor car
Drunk! said Pig
Drunk!

$70

poets.org: "Susan Howe was born in 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the author of several books of poems and two volumes of criticism. Her most recent poetry collections are The Midnight (2003), Kidnapped (2002), The Europe of Trusts (2002), Pierce-Arrow (1999), Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (1996), The Nonconformist's Memorial (1993), The Europe of Trusts: Selected Poems (1990), and Singularities (1990)."

Poems Found In a Pioneer Museum
By Susan Howe
Ballybeg, Grange, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle, 2009. Edition of 300.

3.875 x 5.125"; 35 unbound leaves. 32 letterpress cards. Printed on Canaletto Liscio paper. Two green boards to segregate the poems from the front and back interiors. Two-piece dark green cloth covered binder's box with the title of the book imprinted in the top.

Colophon: "I copied these poems, almost verbatim, from typed identification cards placed beside items in display cases at Salt Lake City's Pioneer Memorial Museum founded in 1901 by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. The artifacts and memorabilia in their collection date from 1847 when Mormon settlers first entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake until the joining of the railroads at Promontory, Utah in 1869."

Minimalist jewels presented in Coracle's elegant style.

43: Hair cut from Joseph Smith
Jr. by Mary Ann Smith Stratton
just before he was taken prisoner.
It was given to Henriette Keyes
Whitney Hale, pioneer of 1847.
It was the only thing she had left
from the journey across.

$40

Bedhangings II
By Susan Howe
Clonemel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle, 2002. Edition of 300.

5 x 6.25"; 26 leaves. Letterpress with printed endpapers. Casebound with embossed inlay on cover.

In Bedhangings II distinguished American poet Susan Howe (American Book Award Winner, Guggenheim fellowship, member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences) teases meaning from the movement of language.

Secrecy let me light you in
In shadow something other
echoed and re-echoed only

The dark who can veneer it
That conjoint abstraction will
come to snow let us go back

$45

Kidnapped
By Susan Howe
Clonemel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle, 2002. Edition of 300.

5.5 x 8.125"; 98 pages. Offset with five 4-colour tip-ins. Casebound in illustrated dust jacket. Photographs by Peter Hare and Susan Howe.

A dense mélange of memoir, essay, and poetry - all revolving around reading - Kidnapped (the allusion and pun are exemplary) is an early version of Howe's much acclaimed The Midnight.

Susan Howe, interviewed by Jon Thompson of Free Verse: "I don't think I would have noticed the ramifications of obsolete interleafs in old volumes had I not been brought up in a household where everyone loved books and where the theatre and lecturing was of central importance. Authors such as Eliot, Woolf, Wilde, Yeats, Synge, and Joyce were as familiar as bread and butter, but so were Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Hugo, the Brontës, Thackeray, and Jane Austen. You might say that the interleaf in Uncle John's copy of The Master of Ballantrae is a punctum. Through it I conjure up everything I feel about odd volumes as uncanny objects. The semi-transparent sheet is a curtain or maybe a scrim. On one side is the author of 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,' A Child's Garden of Verses, Kidnapped and Ballantrae; on the other, an assortment of real personalities who surrounded my childhood. That obediently disobedient thin piece of paper can transport me anywhere. If it were a character it would be Bartleby."

Reader of poetry this book
contains all poetry THOOR
BALLYEE in seven notes for
stage representation May
countryside you reader of
poetry that I am forgotten
Long notes seem necessary
Unworthy players ask for
legend familiar in legend
the arrow king and no king

$60

Simon Cutts is a poet, artist and editor who began Coracle in the early 19702. He began making work through concrete poetry.

Affinity
By Simon Cutts
Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle / Peter Foolen Editions, 2011. Edition of 300.

7 x 8"; 40 unnumbered pages. Printed in duotone offset lithography by R. Booth, Penryn, Cornwall. Photographs of the A boats of the Everard Line taken from The Allen Collection. Hardback linen covers with embossed block printing in 3 colors. Design by Simon Cutts and Peter Foolen.

Another of Simon Cutts' wonderful but maddening simple and confounding productions. This book combines images of the ships from Everard Line whose names begin with A (Affinity is notably – or not – not present) and a letter on the subject of concrete poetry from idiosyncratic and combative Scottish poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay to Pierre Garnier.

As is usual with Coracle productions, there is much to be pondered and learned – and enjoyed – from this mix of particularity and peculiarity.
$40

Utopiary
By Simon Cutts & Karl Torok
London: Coracle, 1988. Edition of 50.

10 x 15"; 32 pages. Letterpress printed on Somerset mould-made paper. Eight computer generated and altered images printed by a paint-jet printer. Half bound in green and brown cloth. Paper title on front board.

The portmanteau title – utopia and topiary – is apt for this combination of minimalist poetry and manipulated images.
$150

Coracle is a small publishing press directed by artist and writer Erica Van Horn and poet, artist and editor Simon Cutts from what was a small farm in between the hills of South Tipperary Ireland, since 1996.

Flight Path
By Erica Van Horn
Ballybeg, Grange, Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle, 2011. Edition of 6.

5.25 x 6.75 x .75"; 6 pages. Accordion. Letterpress. Blue cloth covered boards.

Erica Van Horn: "Flight Path came about as a continuation of my love of the concertina. The book can be seen both page-by-page and as a long panorama of activity. Since 1983, I have worked with both folded paper and casebound concertinas. In the case of Flight Path, the hand-painted pages of sky are the ground for the embossed letter-pressed airplane. The piece is a continuation from Antwerp Airport (1993, edition 35), where I used photo copy on hand-painted pages."

Erica Van Horn, additionally: "My painted pages were cut to size and a block was made from my drawing. He [Simon Cutts] then had the tricky job of placing the planes as close as possible to my plans, using our little Adana press. Once they were dry, the pages were then glued down in order. I am quite thrilled with the results as I like the ephemeral nature of the paint with the solidity of the printed plane and the rigid boards."

Nancy Kuhl, "Narrative and Pattern" from The Book Remembers Everything: The Work of Erica Van Horn: "In her books, Erica Van Horn often explores the elements of visual narrative and the ways those elements of visual narrative might be exploited and subverted within the linear structure of the book. In an entirely modern reinterpretation of the heavy use of patterns found in the borders and backgrounds of much Medieval art, the recurrence of visual patterns frame and shape scenes and figures, underscoring what might be thought of as plot in visual narratives. ... Van Horn's frequent use of the accordion format, which looks and functions like a book but can also be unfolded to reveal a many-paneled panorama, provides her narratives with a page-by-page pace while also calling to mind the scope and grandeur of panoramic images."
$825

Some More Words for Living Locally
Living Locally No.18
By Erica Van Horn
Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle Books, 2011. Edition of 200.

4 x 6"; 24 pages. Photocopy and letterpress in 5 colors. Illustrated wraps. Hand sewn binding. Paper title label on front cover.

A sequel to the earlier edition of 2002, with more involved contexts and narratives.

The Book Remembers Everything / The Art of Erica Van Horn Exhibition, Beinecke Library: "In her Living Locally series, Van Horn celebrates the landscape, culture, and community of her adopted home in rural Tipperary, Ireland. Collecting, documenting, and illustrating the regional language of the area, Van Horn both acknowledges her position as a kind of outsider (a 'blow in,' in the local slang, referring to 'anyone who moves here from somewhere else') and locates herself firmly within the community. The Living Locally series also calls attention to Van Horn’s sheer love of the curious and quirky turns she finds in English, the aurally pleasing sound combinations, the paradoxically conflicting meanings from one locale to another, and the language’s endless flexibility and transformability."

The car mechanic always reminds me
that I am not from here. It has become
a bit of a game for him. When I say Two
Thirty, he says Half Two. Then I ask if
that isn't what I just said. He says No,
you said Two Thirty. Here it is Half Two.

$18