Fine Printing and the Imagination: another upcoming lecture by Peter Koch

The University of British Columbia Library and The Alcuin Society are pleased to announce an upcoming lecture entitled, "Fine Printing and the Imagination". The speaker is Peter Rutledge Koch, artist, printer, writer, and publisher of fine editions and artist books. He will describe and discuss his major work.

Currently living in Berkeley, California, Mr. Koch's work – including over 100 books, and hundreds of broadsides and prints -- is internationally known. His lengthy essay about the making of the Editions Koch Parmenides appears in Carving the Elements: A companion to The Fragments of Parmenides edited by the Canadian poet and essayist Robert Bringhurst. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at The New York Public Library, The San Francisco Public Library, The Widener Library at Harvard University, The Yellowstone Art Museum, and The University of Montana Art Museum.

More recently Mr. Koch has been artist-in-residence at the Scuola Grafica di Venezia in Venice, Italy. In 2005 he co-founded The CODEX Foundation to preserve and promote the arts of the book and is the director of the Biennial CODEX International Book Fair, Symposium, and publishing program. In addition to his creative and collaborative ventures he has taught “The Hand Made Book In Its Historical Context” at the University of California Berkeley in the departments of Visual Studies, History, and at Bancroft Library Press for the past 16 years.

Place: University of British Columbia
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
The Dodson Room
Vancouver, BC
Friday, March 26th, 2010
Time: 1:30 p.m.
Cost: Free and open to the public.

Printing in the Shadow of Aldus: a lecture by Peter Koch

'Printing in the Shadow of Aldus'
Originally uploaded by Fine Press Book Association

The Alcuin Society is pleased to announce an upcoming lecture entitled, "Printing in the Shadow of Aldus". This illustrated talk will explore Joseph Brodsky’s Watermark: A Memoir of Venice, with photographs by Robert Morgan. The book is a series of essays in memoir form, by the poet and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. The speaker is Peter Rutledge Koch, artist, printer, writer, and publisher of fine editions and artist books, including Watermark. Mr. Koch will be introduced by Robert Bringhurst.

Mr. Koch will show slides and talk about the grand adventure of printing Watermark in Venice in collaboration with an international cast of distinguished printers, artists, and artisans, including British Columbia's own Crispin Elsted. Mr. Koch will be in Vancouver as one of the judges of the Alcuin Society 2009 Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada competition, taking place on March 27th, 2010.

Place: Simon Fraser University Downtown Campus, Harbour Centre
Fletcher Challenge Room
Vancouver, BC
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free and open to the public.

Who Said the Book is Dead!

The first years of the 21st century have not been good ones for traditional media.

As more and more people, especially young people, flock online to get their information and their entertainment digitally, real-world TV and radio outlets, filmmakers and distributors, newspapers and the record industry have lost droves of clients and millions, if not billions, of dollars of business.

Case in point: digital piracy is shaving off 12 to 13 per cent of the United States’ total movie industry revenue, a real-world value of $20.5 billion, writes Andrew Keen, author of the Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture.

Yet, this Web 2.0 revolution has yet to totally savage the oldest of old-school media: books.

Spending on books in Canada actually increased by 23 per cent between 1997 and 2001, translating into an impressive $1.1 billion annually. Statistics are also showing that people in their teens, 20s and 30s – the folks quickest to jump on the Web and/or new media bandwagon – are still getting out there and buying books, graphic novels and other book-like media.

Furthermore, young North Americans are continuing to be fascinated by the whole spectrum of book culture, says Robert Demarais, Assistant Special Collections Librarian with the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Library.

‘Book-arts programs (courses in everything from book design, how to make paper, and how to run a letter-press) are enjoying a renaissance all over the place, even in high-tech centres like Seattle,’ he says.”

This blog item is excerpted from an article published in the Edmonton Journal by Gilbert Bouchard entitled “Ink on Paper is Just the Beginning of the Printed-Word Experience. For the full article please check here.

Lemon Hound’s Sina Queyras Visits West Coast for Two Great Readings

March 15 – 17 — Vancouver Goes to the Dogs:
Lemon Hound’s Sina Queyras Visits West Coast for Two Great Readings

In mid-March, the Vancouver literary scene is going to the dogs. Sina Queyras, author of the acclaimed book, Lemon Hound, visits Van City for two readings as part of her West Coast tour. On March 15, Queyras teams with satirist and MAC Farrant, author of Darwin Alone in the Universe and the new The Breakdown So Far (Talonbooks) for a night author of stellar literary entertainment at the UBC Robson Square Bookstore (800 Robson Street). Then, on March 17– St. Patrick’s Day – celebrate the luck of the Irish with the decidedly non-gaelic Sina Queyras, as she reads as the featured author in the Kootenay School of Writing’s reading series at Spartacus Books (319 West Hastings).

Sina Queyras and MAC Farrant at UBCRobson Reading Series
Thursday, March 15, 7:00 p.m.
UBC Robson Square Bookstore, 800 Robson Street

The Kootenay School of Writing presents Sina Queyras
Saturday, March 17, 8:00 p.m.
Spartacus Books, 319 West Hastings

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About Lemon Hound:

This is a poetry not of snapshots or collages but of long-exposed captures of the not-so-still lives of women. One The Wavesby attempting to untangle its six sequence imagines Virginia Woolf’s childhood; another unmakes her novel The Waves by attempting to untangle its six overlapping narratives. Yet another, 'On the Scent,' makes us flâneurs through the lives of a series of contemporary women, while 'The River Is All Thumbs' uses a palette of vibrant repetition to 'paint' a landscape.

Queyras’s language – astute, insistent, languorous – repeats and echoes until it becomes hypnotic, chimerical, almost halluncinatory in its reflexivity. How lyrical can prose poetry be? How closely can it mimic painting? Sculpture? Film? How do we make a moment firm? These ‘postmodern,’ ‘postfeminist’ poems pulse between prose and poetry: the line, the line, they seem to ask, must it ever end?

A lovely balance between lyricism and experimentalism, all the whlie unfolding a fierce intellectual and imaginative 'engagement with the work of Virginia Woolf ... She takes a hypnotic, almost hallucinatory approach, and succeeds.' –The Globe and Mail

Sina Queyras is the author of the poetry collections Slip and Teethmarks. Recently she edited Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets, for Persea Books. Queyras is also the co-curator of Manhattan’s belladonna* reading series, series featuring experimental women’s writing. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches creative writing at Haverford College.

LEMON HOUND | SINA QUEYRAS | APRIL 2006 | 112 PP | $16.95 | ISBN 1 55245 167 4

For review copies or media requests, contact Evan Munday at 416 979 2217 or evan@chbooks.com.

(From a Coach House Books press release)

Reading: a Canadian astronaut’s adventure of a lifetime

Catherine Fortin Major, Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, August 28, 2006

In the next few days, Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean will blast off into space for the second time in his life. Aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis destined for the International Space Station, MacLean will become the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm2 and the second to perform a spacewalk.

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If you bumped into Steve MacLean at your local public library, you probably wouldn’t guess that he is an accomplished laser physicist, or a career astronaut for that matter. His profession may be surprising to some because MacLean’s well-rounded attitude and his appreciation for literature defy the common stereotype of the narrowly-focused and introverted scientist. In fact, Steve credits his passion for science to the sense of adventure that was instilled in him at a very young age through reading. “You start reading,” he says, “and it becomes the adventure of a lifetime if you continue to do it.”

MacLean claims his many trips as a child to the Ottawa Public Library to read books like Treasure Island, Sinbad and the Seven Seas and Never Cry Wolf inspired him to want to be a part of something meaningful and special as an adult. He also credits reading to allowing him to see the bigger picture in life and getting a better understanding of different points of view and cultures.

“Reading had a huge impact on my space career,” says MacLean. “And I find that people who read a lot—even among the astute engineers and scientists here at the Space Agency—are often the most interesting people.”

Contrary to many of his present colleagues, MacLean admits that his desire to be an astronaut did not originate as a child. Instead, it was his co-workers in the science field who encouraged him to apply to the Space Program in 1984. In fact, when Steve wasn’t in the library, he spent much of his time in the gym and eventually earned himself a spot on the Canadian National Gymnastics Team. One day, he wondered how good he could become at something else if he worked as hard at it as he did with gymnastics. So he decided to try a little experiment where he studied mathematics as hard as he could and read up on everything that was related to that subject. Needless to say, he eventually became pretty good at math and decided to make a career out of it.

Despite focusing his academic studies on math and science, MacLean says reading has had, and continues to have, an important place in his life and played a central role in developing him as the well-rounded person that he has come to be. As a graduate student at York University, Steve admits to taking breaks from his technical study in the computer labs by going to the library, which was next door. There, he would make his way to the mountain climbing or Arctic explorer sections, open any book at random, and learn about something new that was totally unrelated to his scientific course of study. MacLean saw this as a relaxation break as well as an opportunity to advance his career by helping him “better relate in the world,” as he puts it.

And being able to “better relate in the world” is precisely why MacLean feels reading is so critical to a child’s development. “Reading really has made a difference for me,” he says, “and it’s really why I want to be a part of what the Canadian libraries are doing.” Steve’s latest projects involve an essay contest for students aged nine to fourteen titled, “Launch Your Future with Reading,” as well as the conception of an electronic library for children’s space-related works and other educational materials which will be housed on the Canadian Space Agency website. By participating in projects like these, the astronaut hopes that young people will make the link between reading, science and creativity, and realize that reading can have a huge impact on their future, as it did with his.

Specifically, MacLean’s message to students is that you don’t have to be an Einstein to succeed. “You just have to be a journeyman who works hard,” he says. And according to MacLean, to be a true journeyman or journeywoman you have to hit up your local public library and read. Through his work with the public libraries, Steve hopes kids will learn that seeing the big picture and understanding how and why people think differently is forever beneficial, regardless of the career—or planet—you choose to work on.

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For more information about the Launch Your Future with Reading Contest, visit the CLA website at www.cla.ca, and for more information about Steve MacLean and his mission, visit the Canadian Space Agency website at www.space.gc.ca.