Some Forms of Availability: Critical Passages on The Book and Publication

Cutts, Simon

ISBN 10: 188712375X / ISBN 13: 9781887123754

Published by Granary Books: RGAP, Cromford, 2007

About this Item

First printing in an edition of 1000 copies. Virtually as new.

Seller Inventory # 007882

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Some Forms of Availability: Critical Passages on The Book and Publication
• Publisher: Granary Books: RGAP, Cromford
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 188712375X
• ISBN 13: 9781887123754
• Binding: Original Wraps
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket as issued

About this title

Synopsis

Dubbed the "Apollinaire of our times" by fellow poet and publisher Jonathan Williams, Simon Cutts, born in 1944, has tirelessly worked the fertile gaps between genres, issuing poems, prints, sculpture, artist's books and combinations of all of the above through Coracle, the imprint and sometime gallery he runs with book artist Erica Van Horn from their home in Southern Ireland. Through Coracle, Cutts has also championed artists such as Ian Hamilton Finlay, Anish Kapoor, Richard Tuttle and Trevor Winkfield, often long before their works found wider fame. Some Forms of Availability gathers speculative essays, interviews and other statements and texts by Cutts that address the legacy of the small presses and magazines of the 60s, from which milieu Coracle arose, as well as more recent developments in artists' books. Some Forms of Availability is illustrated with thumbnail images and facsimile reproductions of Coracle books and ephemera, and includes a useful chapter on their "polemical postcards." At ease in all printed idioms, and constructively indifferent to divisions between them, Cutts exploits the potential for humor and lightness of touch that is inherent in such idioms. This collection of his writings testifies to the clarity of his project.

Synopsis

"Some Forms of Availability" assembles speculative essays, reviews, interviews, and collected statements and texts by Simon Cutts, long-time publisher of Coracle Press. Its concern is with the recent history of the book and the idea of publication arising from its occurrence in modernism, the small presses and the developing artist's book. At the same time, it introduces some of the ephemera produced by Coracle over the years, the Polemical Postcards, and a facsimile case history of the distribution of one such understated work. These may all contribute to a new optimism for the availability of the small publication and for the sense of achievement within a finite means.