Excerpts from Friends & Family
Jason Dewinetz
¶ "Here are six exquisite meditations—unflinching poem-portraits of a poet’s loved ones. The extracts are startling in both their matter-of-fact discussions of “friends & family” and also in their lyrical and philosophical command. The poems are marked by an “I” that glimpses beauty in the everyday—a baby son’s hands are “like hummingbirds”—and yet the poems are also impressively intellectual in the sense that they trouble, and even slash at, the surrounding lyricism with fundamental questions: “what qualifies connection?” or “what are words?” So Friends & Family is an at once boldly personal and cerebral work. It draws superb portraits of those who are broken and those who are thriving—and it wonders brilliantly at the limits and possibilities of our most important relationships.
—Jake Kennedy
Jason Dewinetz is a writer, editor, publisher and typographer originally from, and now living back in, the Okanagan Valley. With an academic background in English Literature (BA. UVic, MA, U of Alberta), he is the author of The Gift of a Good Knife (Outlaw Editions), Moving to the Clear (NeWest Press), Clench (Gaspereau Press), Friends & Family, and co-author of A Bibliography of the Black Sparrow Press (University of Alberta Press). He is the founding editor, publisher and designer of Greenboathouse Press, and his design and production for Greenboathouse has brought in more than a dozen national book design awards. Jason is a current board member and past-North American Chair of the Fine Press Book Association, and is an instructor in the Writing and Publishing program at Okanagan College.
2014
5.25" × 8.75", 20pp. 45 copies.
$100
ISBN: 978-1-894744-34-8
Out of Print
Colophon:
Hand-set in Stern, Jim Rimmer's last original metal typeface—but that's a ridiculous understatement. Some of the type was cast by Jim in 2009, while the bulk was cast anew from the original matrices (kindly loaned by the folks at the C.C. Stern Typefoundry) here at the Greenboathouse Press. But that still doesn't cut it. The type was cast in very short bursts from Jim's rather cantankerous Monotype Super Caster, which moved from Jim's shop here to Vernon after his untimely death in 2010. After much wrestling with the beast, the type was finally cast, each individual sort being hand-finished on a rubbing stone, and at last set into pages with the skilled assistance of Caitlin Voth. Printed on lovely handmade paper from Tim Barrett and his crew at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, then bound into a stiff wrapper of Cave paper in an edition of 45, this being number...
Limited to 45 numbered copies, all signed by the author.