December 7, 1995 Contact: Barbara McKenna (408/459-2495)

ANNUAL JOURNAL PAYS TRIBUTE TO LATE POET/PRINTER WILLIAM EVERSON

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--When he launched Equinox Press in 1947, the late master poet-printer William Everson explained his desire for establishing the fine letterpress this way: "As a creative man the richest thing I can do is to write a poem, and the next is to print it." He believed that when text is transformed from manuscript to printed piece it is elevated "from simply utilitarian into a transcendent mode in its own right."

Everson's vision sparked a flourishing fine press community in Santa Cruz and is partly responsible for the dramatic rise during the last 25 years in the production of artists' books--books that fuse text, fine arts, and the book arts of typography, papermaking, and binding.

In a tribute to his life and work, the editors of the journal Quarry West have released a special edition honoring Everson and exploring the field of book arts. Quarry West 32: The Poet as Printer: William Everson & The Fine Press Artists' Book presents an intimate view of Everson and examines the medium in which the poet-printer worked.

Quarry West is printed annually at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where Everson was a poet-in-residence for nearly a decade. Quarry West 32 presents essays, poems, and other writings by leading poets, authors, printmakers, journalists, and scholars whom Everson counted among his friends and colleagues. It also presents a number of Everson's poems and reproductions of some of Everson's most compelling broadsides.

A native Californian, Everson joined the Dominican brotherhood in 1951 and, for two decades, penned his poetry under the name of Brother Antoninus. When he shed his monk's robes in 1969, Everson came to live in Santa Cruz, where he remained until his death at the age of 81.

Everson taught poetry at UC Santa Cruz between 1969 and 1978 and many former students consider him a mentor. As novelist James Houston notes, Everson "inspired a generation of younger printers to carry on the flame of his craft and art."

Throughout his career, Everson regarded poetry writing as the first step in a two-part process. The poem was complete only when it was printed. When he received the printed copies of his poem Tendril in the Mesh, Everson wrote in delight to printer Clifford Burke:

Your book has been around for a week--many copies fetched from Peter's stock--they float in the room, levitate, shift in the sun, dance in the rainy spring weather. Their presence has enchanted me. I am in love with them.

That is why I say your book. A printer, every once in a while, possesses a text and makes it his own. He reaches into the inner essence of the work, and finds the germ of its truth-of-being, and by an act of creative force makes it his own. It becomes his. Before him the work exists only in potentia, inert, a manuscript merely. Then the masculine spirit of the printer clasps it, embraces it, and out of its ambience something superlative is produced.

The second section of Quarry West 32 focuses on the book as an art form, and specifically on an exhibition of artists' book titled "Dressing the Text: The Fine Press Artists' Books." The exhibit opened in Santa Cruz in April 1995 and is on a national tour across the country through March 1998. It is cosponsored by the Art Museum of Santa Cruz County and the Printers' Chappel of Santa Cruz (an informal organization of book artists established in Santa Cruz 15 years ago). The exhibit presents 48 artists' books selected by jury from roughly 200 submissions. Jury members are Ruth McGurk (Peripatetic Press), Felicia Rice (Moving Parts Press), Peter Thomas (Peter & Donna Thomas), and Gary Young (Greenhouse Review Press).

Quarry West has been published annually at the University of California, Santa Cruz, since 1971. The journal presents poetry, poetry in translation, fiction, art, essays, and reviews. Quarry West 32 is edited by Ken Weisner and guest editor Felicia Rice. This issue was printed with support from the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County.

Copies of Quarry West are $15 and can be obtained by writing to Quarry West, c/o Porter College, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Calif., 95064 or by calling (408) 459-2951.

Press Releases Home | Search Press Releases | Press Release Archive | Services for Journalists

Maintained by:pioweb@cats.ucsc.edu