Grief’s Broken Brow is a new commission for Poetry As Commemoration containing poems & artwork inspired by the Irish War of Independence & Civil War archives. Launching November 22nd and the Museum of Literature Ireland. All welcome.
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Design & letterpress printing by Jamie Murphy 
Studio assistance by Ellen Martin-Friel 
Suite of new artworks by James Earley 
Suminagashi marbling by Louise Gaffney 
Binding by Duffy Bookbinders 
Arts producer for UCD was Catherine Wilsdon
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Introductory essay by Lucy Collins 
Afterword by Daniel Ayiotis
Poetry by Seán Hewitt, Padraig Regan, Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Nithy Kasa, Victoria Kennefick, Paul Muldoon, Stephen Sexton, Martina Evans, Aifric MacAodha, Bebe Ashley 
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Film by Ruairi Conaty
Poem: 'Wound' by Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi
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Poetry As Commemoration is a UCD Library initiative in partnership with Poetry Ireland and Arts Council NI supported by Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries programme 2012-2023

haiku na feirme

Poetry by John FitzGerald. Visual interventions, design, typography and letterpress printing by Jamie Murphy. Irish handmade paper by Griffen Mill. Binding by Tom Duffy. Videography by Ruairi Conaty. Poems read by John FitzGerald.

The prospectus for CARBON was completed just ahead of Codex VIII, and it was very well received over the four days of the book fair. The type is letterpress printed from the new woodletter and the paper is taken from the 260kg of custom watermarked Velké Losiny handmade that is intended for the project. The measure is 420mm x 300mm approx (as the book will be), 16 pages.

Carbon is the basis for all life on earth, and the harbinger of our demise. In this hypnotic prose poem / essay Jessica Traynor (Liffey Swim, 2015 and A Modest Proposal, 2017) contemplates this element in its many forms, following a meteor’s flight, picking through WWII bombsites, visiting geodesic domes, seventeenth century laboratories, Plato’s cave, and pushing ever deeper below the earth’s crust in search of wild spirits, and the black lake at the heart of all things.

Inspired by the aesthetics of hand-typed scientific reports and woodtype printed protest posters, Jamie Murphy has interpreted the text by employing a new mono-spaced typeface developed specifically for this project in collaboration with type designer Bobby Tannam. In an effort to capture the materiality of the subject, evidence of carbon rich matter emerges throughout the book in the form of smoke, lampblack, soot, charcoal, peat, graphite and diamond.

Designed & letterpress printed by Jamie Murphy. The book will be typeset in six line (one inch high) Carbon Mono, a new woodletter designed for this book by Bobby Tannam, cut from end grain beech by Scott Cameron.

80 books will be bound by Marc Hammonds. 54 numbered copies on 200gsm handmade paper from the Losiny mill in goat & carbon painted paper over boards, housed in a solander box. 26 lettered copies on 200gsm Losiny handmade, bound in full (carbon altered) goat, accompanied by a second copy of the book on & in blackened, diamond infused 200gsm Losiny handmade paper, along with a portfolio of extra printed materials and artefacts, all presented in a cloth covered solander box.

Intended for publication in 2022. Please enquire for printed prospectus and pricing details.

Ireland’s rural landscape is both subject and setting in this new sequence of twenty haikus by John FitzGerald (Darklight, 2018). The traditional Japanese haiku’s observance of nature is adapted to a new Hibernian hybrid which fuses perception with experience to create distinct occasions of meaning and sound. Taking his inspiration from the land and its plant, animal and human inhabitants, these poems are offered as verbal exclamations, short instances of lived and felt experience which follow the seasons and celebrate the richness and diversity of life on the land. Jamie Murphy has produced six abstract woodblock prints which act as pauses in the text. These visual interventions are inspired by the poet's immediate landscape and printed from 300 year old Irish oak which fell there some years ago.

Designed, typeset and letterpress printed by Jamie Murphy at his newly finished home studio. John FitzGerald penned the haikus from spring 2019 through to summer 2021. The type is Frutiger’s Méridien Italic (1966), printed onto damp 65-130 gsm Griffen Mill, the last remaining sheets of Irish hand-made paper, purchased from the mill on their retirement in early 2020. The visual interventions have been printed directly from prepared oak blocks onto 39 gsm Japanese Hosokawa. 

We're aiming for 100 copies. The bindings will be executed by Tom Duffy and family, my long time binding collaborators based in Dublin. 70 numbered copies will be quarter bound in painted Griffen Mill paper over boards, held in a slipcase. Marked i–iv, four similar copies will be reserved for collaborators. 26 lettered copies will be bound in altered goat, presented in a cloth covered solander box.

Originally intended for release in 2020, I now hope to launch the book in December, 2021. The book will launch at €1250 (deluxe) and €550 (standard). A small number of both standard and deluxe copies are available now at a pre-publication discount of 20% (€1000 / €440). Please enquire.

This piece is being prepared for Extraction; Life At the Edge of the Abyss, a large art project instigated by the Codex Foundation USA. This piece will be one of 26 that make up a portfolio intended to raise funds for the project.

From the Colophon:

In May 1978, while hand-cutting turf on Meenybraddan bog in County Donegal, a woollen cloak was uncovered about one metre below the surface. When opened, the cloak was found to contain a partially preserved human body. A sample of bone established a date of c.1570, confirming the late medieval period suggested by the cloak.The absence of oxygen in Irish bogs slows down the process of decay, preserving organic material for thousands of years. 

Designed, composed & letterpress printed by Jamie Murphy for Extraction; Art on the Edge of the Abyss. The type is Frutiger’s 14D Méridien. Printed above is an ink mixed with peat dust. 100 copies on various 115 gsm Griffen Mill Irish handmade papers.

Please join us for the launch of NINE SILENCES.

In this new suite of poems, Doireann Ní Ghríofa responds to artwork by Alice Maher. Nine Silences is a consideration of the embodiment of silence, mermaids, and the monstrousness of the feminine, deepening into an exploration of female desire and domesticity. Alice Maher’s (fragmented) woodcut makes visible the tensions between language and silence, autonomy and substance. Through the book’s design and production, Jamie Murphy has nurtured the delicate relationship between text and image, creating a powerful narrative guided by space, typographic sensibility and a deep awareness of materiality.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Alice Maher and Jamie Murphy will be joined by Fiona Kearney (Glucksman Gallery, UCC) in a conversation about the making of this new artists’ book. They will explore the ways in which the collaborators interacted with site, materials, production tools / values and collaborative working methods.

2 pm – 4 pm, November 17th, 2018

Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork, Ireland

Darklight comprises a suite of new poems by John Fitzgerald surrounded with an etching by Dorothy Cross. The concept of the book in both its subject matter and in its materiality centres on the darkness of night.

About the collaborators: 

John FitzGerald is a graduate of University College Cork (BA in English and Philosophy, 1983), University College Dublin, and the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. Following some time working as an IT specialist in the private sector in Ireland and the UK, and as a librarian at Trinity College Dublin, he became University Librarian at University College Cork in 1996, where he also currently holds overall responsibility for the Cork University Press. John is the winner of the 2014 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Prize; he was shortlisted for the 2015 Hennessy New Irish Writing Award; and in 2016 he acted as a jury member of the Poem for Ireland campaign, launched by RTE. His poetry chapbook ‘First Cut’ was published by Southward in 2017. He lives with his family on a farm in Lissarda, County Cork.

Dorothy Cross' work ranges from object to opera: working with sculpture, photography and video. The themes of her work have dealt with memory and inheritance, sexuality and desire, and the position of the human in nature. Her work came to mainstream public attention with her solo show Ebb at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin in 1988. This was followed by several major shows: Powerhouse at the ICA Philadelphia (1991) and Even, at Arnolfini, Bristol, England (1996). These shows were made up of large sculptures that often contained found objects both from her family and from studios such as the Pigeonhouse power station in Dublin Bay where she worked for four years in the early 1990s. She represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and the Istanbul Biennial in 1997 with her Udder series. Her best known public work is Ghost Ship, where she painted a de- commissioned lightship with phosphorous paint and moored it in Dublin Bay, where it glowed at night for several weeks in the winter of 1999. In 2013 An Post released a stamp celebrating the Ghost Ship. In 2005 a major retrospective of her work was held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Dorothy now lives on the coast of north Galway.

The type has been hand-set in 14 and 24 point Méridien, designed by Adrian Frutiger. The image by Dorothy Cross has been produced in two variants; the etching that covers the standard book was printed by Suzannah O’Reilly Mullaney, the phosphorescent images that accompany the deluxe book were first silkscreen printed by Jordan McQuaid before intaglio printing by Suzannah. Both image variants were printed on 54gsm Japanese Tosa Shi. Darklight has been printed in an edition of 80 copies. The bindings will be executed by Tom Duffy and family in Dublin’s Five Lamps area. Housed in a transparent perspex slipcase, copies marked 1 – 50 have been printed on and will be bound in handmade paper commissioned for this book from the Velké Losiny Mill in the Czech Republic. Copies marked A – Z have been printed on the Velké Losiny paper and will be bound in full Pentland goat, presented in a Japanese cloth covered solander box. 

The task of producing the phosphorescent image by Dorothy Cross is very tricky. The phosphorescent layer requires silkscreen printing to achieve the rich glow and to keep an even tone (I’v made phosphorescent ink for letterpress in the past and it’s very troublesome). The silkscreen is water-based and will try to warp the paper. The intaglio image will be produced at great pressure onto paper dampened for a second time. Then the paper will need to be flattened once again. I want it to be delicate and thin like only handmade Japanese papers are. So, it will need to be produced in two parts, first silkscreen printed by Jordan McQuaid in Dublin City before intaglio printing by Suzannah O'Reilly at Parallel Editions in Limerick. The paper for the image has been sourced from Kawanaka, Japan. I’m very excited to see how these processes work out.

The book is currently at the bindery. I hope to launch the book during December 2018. The books will launch at €1250 (deluxe) and €450 (standard). A small number of both standard and deluxe copies are available now at a pre-publication discount of 20%. Please enquire.

Further copies of both variants of TOWN have arrived from binder Craig Jensen in Texas and will be shipping this week. Packing, packing, packing!

Throughout the making of the poems Doireann Ní Gríofa had access to a recent collection of Alice Maher's woodcuts which she had made in collaboration with Parallel Editions in Limerick. These images would become inspiration for the poetry and so I thought it would be best to in some way incorporate a woodcut into the book. In discussion with Alice we decided to take a silhouette which had been a source of inspiration to Doireann and to make something new with it. I'm hoping to achieve a number of full impressions for the deluxe copies and to then break the woodcut down to include in the printing of the book. This will symbolise the defragmenting of the female body, a theme relevant and appropriate to the project. This defragmented image will be scattered throughout the book where will it will take the form of abstract but interesting forms, a subtle suggestion of female form.

NYC BOOK LAUNCH: This special one-night event will feature an exhibition of hand-printed photographs by Rich Gilligan, a live poetry recital by Annemarie Ní Churreáin and Jamie Murphy will talk about the making of the book, exploring the ways in which the collaborators interacted with site, materials, production tools / values and collaborative working methods. Belinda McKeon will host a discussion about the project with the artists.

Please contact for printed prospectus.

7pm – 9pm, July 17th, 2018

American Irish Historical Society, 

991 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028

RSVP to Sophie Colgan: scolgan@aihs.org

Link to video piece: https://vimeo.com/277675093

Nine Silences will comprise of thirteen new poems by Doireann Ní Gríofa which will weave through a scattered, defragmented woodcut by Alice Maher. The project originated with Alice's finding of a stone carving at Kilcooley Abbey in County Tipperary. The carving, located many miles from the sea, clearly depicts a mermaid and two fish, possibly a salmon and a carp. Both Alice and Doireann will here investigate themes of, amungst others, the body as a hybrid and the female form in folklore. The themes of water and the sea will greatly inspire the book's design and materiality — water has played an integral part in the making of the vintage handmade paper, Carrigeen Moss from the West coast of Ireland is a major factor in the making of the newly commissioned marbled paper and salmon leather will be used in the deluxe bindings.

About the collaborators: Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual writer whose books explore birth, death, desire, and domesticity.  Awards for her writing include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Michael Hartnett Prize, and a Seamus Heaney Fellowship. She frequently participates in cross-disciplinary collaborations, fusing poetry with film, dance, music, and visual art. Recent/forthcoming commissions include work for The Poetry Society (Britain), RTÉ Radio 1, University College Cork, and The Arts Council / Crash Ensemble. She writes "with tenderness and unflinching curiosity” (Poetry Magazine, Chicago). Alice Maher studied at the University of Limerick and the Crawford College of Art, Cork. She was awarded a Master’s degree in Fine Art from the University of Ulster and shortly after a Fulbright Scholarship to San Francisco Art Institute. Her work involves many different media including painting, drawing, sculpture, print, photography and installation. She has exhibited widely in Ireland, England and the United States, and represented Ireland in the 22nd São Paolo Bienal. In 2008, the David Nolan Gallery in New York hosted a solo exhibition of new drawings and sculptures titled Hypnerotomachia. In 2007, a large survey show of her work, Natural Artifice, was held at the Brighton and Hove Museums. Also in that year she completed a major drawing installation, The Night Garden, for the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. 

The type will be hand-typeset in 14 and 24 point Méridien, designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957, cast here by Rainer Gerstenberg. An edition of Alice Maher’s woodcut will first be printed from the original block for inclusion with deluxe copies. The woodcut will then be broken up and scattered throughout the book where it will weave its way through the poetry. The vintage handmade paper was produced in the 1970s by the Wookey Hole Mill for the Stanbrook Abbey Press. The marbled paper will be prepared by Jemma Lewis based on the theme of the sea.

The book will be printed in an edition of 80 copies. Copies marked 1 — 50 will be bound in marbled paper over boards, housed in a clear perspex slipcase. Four similar copies marked i — iv will be for collaborators. Copies marked A — Z will be half-bound in salmon leather and marbled paper and housed, accompanied by a chamise containing a folded printing of the original woodcut, in solander box. The bindings will be executed by Tom Duffy and family in Dublin’s Five Lamps area. 

I hope to launch the book in Autumn, 2018. The book will launch at €950 (deluxe) and €550 (standard). A small number of both standard and deluxe copies are available now at a pre-publication discount of 20%. Please enquire.

Rich Gilligan shot the images for TOWN over the last days of 2017. He walked for miles through Dublin streets with a view to capturing a moment in time, never to be repeated again. The 35mm rolls were then sent to Barb Wilson in London for processing. Barb in turn sent contact sheets to Rich in New York where the edit was selected and finalised. Videographer (and previous TSP assistant) Ruairi Conaty followed Rich one afternoon and captured some wonderful footage of the artist at work for an upcoming video piece.

TOWN will comprise of ten new poems by Annemarie Ní Churreáin and a series of new photographs by Rich Gilligan. The book will serve as a snapshot of Dublin City, affectionately known to locals as 'Town'. The interplay of text and image will be facilitated by a series of staggered folding pages. The book will be printed on newly commissioned handmade paper with the tipped-in images all exposed by hand onto resin coated paper.

About the collaborators: Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from North West Donegal. She has been awarded literary fellowships by Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), Jack Kerouac House (Florida) and Hawthornden Castle (Scotland). Her work has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The SHOp, The London Magazine, Agenda Poetry Journal and The Stinging Fly.In 2016, Annemarie was the recipient of a Next Generation Artists Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. In 2017, Annemarie was appointed to the Writers In Prisons Panel co-funded by the Arts Council & the Department of Justice, Equality and Reform. She is second place winner of the 2017 Red Line Festival Poetry Award. Her debut collection BLOODROOT was published in 2017 by Doire Press. Rich Gilligan is known for his distinctive approach to fashion and portraiture, with a style that exists somewhere between classic reportage and fine art photography. Rich's photography has been widely exhibited, with recent shows in Dali, Malmo, Dublin, London, Munich, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Sydney and Copenhagen. He was awarded the 2013 Showcase Photography Award from the Gallery of Photography, Dublin for emerging talent in Europe and was recently selected by Time Magazine as one of the top nine photographers to watch. Rich is currently based in upstate New York.

Designed in 1957, the type will be set Adrian Frutiger’s Méridien in 14 and 20 point sizes. Rich Gilligan’s photographs were shot over the last days of 2017. They will be enlarged from the 35mm negatives onto resin coated paper by Barb Wilson at her studio in London. The watermarked handmade paper is 200 gsm, commissioned for the book from the Velké Losiny Mill in the Czech Republic.

The book will be printed in an edition of 80 copies. Copies marked 1 — 50 will be bound in hand painted book-cloth over boards, housed in a cloth covered slipcase. Four similar copies marked i — iv will be for collaborators. Copies marked A — Z will be bound in full alum tawed calf leather and will each be housed, accompanied by a portfolio containing eight further photographic prints, in a painted cloth covered solandar box. These bindings will be executed by Tom Duffy and family in Dublin’s Five Lamps area. 

I hope to launch the book during Summer, 2018.