Stones
Incline Press
First printing: 'Verona' Edition Letterpress pamphlet, 16 pages (April 2016) Limited run of 160 numbered copies 12 numbered copies cased No ISBN |
Incline Press
Second printing: 'Bembo' edition Letterpress pamphlet, 16 pages (October 2016) Limited run of fewer than 400 copies No ISBN |
Stones is a longer poem of around 200 lines, handsomely illustrated by a wood engraving by Paul Kershaw, that takes its setting from the Lake District. It was here that the author was living when he began work on the poem in 2006; it has taken a decade and more than 300 pages of drafts to since complete. It is this very element of time, and its contribution to our well being, that occupies the poem: after trauma, how can we live well in the present without denigrating the past? Must we retain our connection to formative experience, whatever the personal cost, in order to understand the present?
Stones is printed in two editions. The first is in Verona type, a Stephenson Blake face from 1925 that has not yet been digitised, on Zerkall paper with a sedimentary watermark. The titling is DeLittle of York’s Number 41, a sans serif wood type. The cover paper was handmade in Montreal at the Papeterie St-Armand for this book. The edition is of 160 individually hand-printed copies, each numbered, and signed by the author, now sold out, together with twelve cased copies, not for sale.
The second printing of Stones is a handmade book, printed letterpress with metal and wood type, then hand bound in an edition of fewer than four hundred copies. It was printed by Graham Moss in Bembo type on Zerkall paper supplied by John Purcell of Brixton. The wood type is Delittle of York’s Number 43, made in the 1950s.
Stones is printed in two editions. The first is in Verona type, a Stephenson Blake face from 1925 that has not yet been digitised, on Zerkall paper with a sedimentary watermark. The titling is DeLittle of York’s Number 41, a sans serif wood type. The cover paper was handmade in Montreal at the Papeterie St-Armand for this book. The edition is of 160 individually hand-printed copies, each numbered, and signed by the author, now sold out, together with twelve cased copies, not for sale.
The second printing of Stones is a handmade book, printed letterpress with metal and wood type, then hand bound in an edition of fewer than four hundred copies. It was printed by Graham Moss in Bembo type on Zerkall paper supplied by John Purcell of Brixton. The wood type is Delittle of York’s Number 43, made in the 1950s.
Bookshop.
Media.
Stones was first broadcast on The Echo Chamber, BBC Radio 4, 4 December 2016, and is periodically available here.
Reviews.
‘We’re entering a mineral elemental, well-worn and abraded world where stones are made stony, which is the job of the poet. We’re moving into deep time and the slow poetry movement, which I have just made-up, but if there were such a thing Matthew Hollis would fit right in. He’s recently published his first poems between covers in over 10 years a pamphlet called Stones, an EP off the big glacial album, and it’s magnificent, and we wanted the whole thing, so Matthew was called into the Echo Chamber, where he’s produced, as you’re about to hear. Stones feels like hard won chips off an old block. It also feels like an EP in the John Peel sense, lovingly produced and pressed on the Incline label.’
– Paul Farley, BBC Radio 4
‘a truly lovely thing.’
– Clare Pollard, Poetry Magazine / Poetry Foundation
