The 'X' Mas Files
Cards, Folding Cards & Notes from Stephen Duncalf 1994-1999
By Simon Cutts
Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland: Coracle Press, 2016. unstated.

6 x 5.25"; 44 pages. Digitally printed. Casebound paper over boards. Inset title label.

Afterword: "The 'X' Mas Files is a random cross-section of extracts from the postcards, folding cards, and notes received from Stephen Duncalf during the period 1994 - 1999. Its title is not only an overt pun on the existence of the eponymous movie in dubious taste, but also descriptive of the annual cards and ephemeral offerings that printer-poets, artists and writers sent to each other around this time. These were sent by post, and firmly endorsed the mailing system that has so much part of the life of the time.

"So much so, that the exchange here included two items despatched on floor-covering linoleum, that of the cover paper of this book, and also one isolated in the centre.

"But taken overall, and from different times of the year besides that of supposed celebration, these jottings reveal the searching sensibility of their author, battle-hardened to the point of entrenchment, sheltering in a world of his own making."
$20