Small Press, Big Ideas by H. J. Kirchhoff, reprinted from The Globe and Mail, July 1990. 

Canada's Loveliest Books are Made in Erin? by Mark Abley, reprinted from The Montreal Gazette, 1992. 

Elke in the bindery

John Metcalf

Irving Layton, with binoculars,
on Mount Royal

Don Dickinson

Virgil Burnett

Clark Blaise

Hugh Hood

Ray Smith

Jane Urquhart

James Reaney

George Johnston

The Porcupine's Quill

© 1991, Books in Canada

The Porcupine's Quill, the press that Tim and Elke Inkster eventually founded, might be called `second wave,' arising directly out of that first wave of nationalist Canadian publishing that began in 1967. Working as the pressman for Porcépic, Tim Inkster (what a wonderfully fated name) because frustrated by Godfrey's unwillingness to invest in a decent printing press. So in 1974 he and Elke started Porcupine's Quill simply as a production arm. But when the arrangement didn't work out, the Inksters decided to become independent, bought their own building across the street - where they still operate - and moved in above it.

If the backlist of the press seems a rather eclectic mix of poetry, fiction, visual art, criticism, and young adult novels, the reason is that the press developed its editorial taste somewhat after the fact. Tim Inkster says, `Our first book was in 1975. By that time we'd been doing quite a bit of book printing for a variety of small publishers. And I was frustrated as a printing craftsman that I couldn't convince any of the publishers to put the kind of money that I thought appropriate into some of these titles for their best presentation.' To show them how fine a book could look, Inkster obtained a poetry manuscript from an old college friend, Brian Johnson (now the film reviewer for Maclean's), and a new publishing line was born.

Over the years the press's books have won design awards from the Alcuin Society and the Art Directors' Club of New York. While the editorial direction has been less consistent than the production values, Porcupine's Quill has still published an impressive group of writers: Hugh Hood, Richard Outram, James Reaney, and Robin Skelton among them. Recently two titles, Jane Urquhart's Storm Glass and Mark Frutkin's Atmospheres Apollinaire, were picked up by David R. Godine in the United States. Over the years writers such as Urquhart and Joe Rosenblatt have helped out as voluntary editors. But now an overworked Inkster (whose printing operation subsidizes the press) has given over much of the editorial decision-making to a triumvirate of experienced and, to say the least, opinionated editors: John Metcalf, John Newlove, and J.R. (Tim) Struthers. The three have already brought a new, invigorated direction to the press.

`I think it is an unusual situation, but one that I'm very pleased about,' says Metcalf, the fiction writer and polemicist who for years has been trying to shake up Canada's literary establishment. Metcalf and Inkster first discussed The Porcupine's Quill over dinner two years ago at the University of Guelph. Out of that conversation has come Sherbrooke Street, a reprint series whose first titles are Ray Smith's Cape Breton Is the Thought Control Centre of Canada, Irving Layton's The Improved Binoculars, and Clark Blaise's Lunar Attractions. While Inkster has his eye on the university market, Metcalf is hoping these reprints will capture that elusive beast, the general reader. `I thought that the series was necessary in Canada because we lose our culture every 15 to 20 years,' he says. `Suddenly it's as though collective memory has been wiped out and we have to start all over again.' Forthcoming in the series are selected editions of Hugh Hood and Leon Rooke, as well as Norman Levine's Canada Made Me and From a Seaside Town.

Metcalf plans to emphasize both the short story and new writers, and he has done both with well-received first collections by Terry Griggs and Dayv James-French. Another first book, by Don Dickinson, is imminent, and Metcalf is currently working on a book of stories by the poet Steven Heighton. Metcalf says, `What I'm looking for is stuff that just comes off the page at me. Where the language is vital and interesting. When you read the first paragraph it's as though you're receiving an electric shock. And that kind of feeling tends to go with formal innovation.'

Metcalf and his editorial colleagues also hope to rewrite our literary past with a series of histories and bibliographies. Currently being written for the press are an annotated checklist of the House of Anansi by Douglas Fetherling, a history of the Contact Press by Bruce Whiteman, and a book on collecting Canadian literature by the Toronto bookseller Steven Temple. This is indeed a new era for The Porcupine's Quill, and it looks to be a very interesting one for the general readers out there, as well.

Cary Fagan, July 1991

Small Press, Big Ideas

© 1990, The Globe and Mail

It's an inscription that could serve as a motto for Porcupine's Quill owner-operators, Tim and Elke Inkster. They manage to live an eminently civilized life in their restored storefront building on the Main Street of this Southern Ontario town, all the while producing uncompromisingly fine books of literary fiction and poetry.

`I do what I do because I want to do it,' said the slim, bearded and boyish-looking Inkster recently. He puffed on a pipe in his back yard (`my award-winning garden,' he calls it) while looking out over the Credit river - a location he thinks is marvellously appropriate for a publisher. `I could make a lot of money doing job printing, but it would be a very frustrating way to live.'

Inkster (a marvellously appropriate name for a printer-publisher) was born in Toronto 40 years ago and raised in Montreal. He attended the University of Toronto as an English major, and while there heard a lecture on typography by Coach House founder and pressman Stan Bevington. That marked the beginning of Inkster's obsession with making fine books. He went to work for Press Porcépic, under publisher David Godfrey, in 1969, and in 1970 he and Elke moved with the operation to Erin, from its original headquarters on Spadina Avenue in Toronto.

The Porcupine's Quill began life as the production arm of Press Porcépic. Porcupine and Porcépic split in 1974, when Godfrey and Porcépic moved to Victoria, B.C. The Inksters eventually moved into a beautiful renovated apartment above the shop - the printshop occupies the basement, and the darkroom, bindery and offices are at street level.

The first Porcupine's Quill list, in 1974, included Marzipan Lies, by Brian Johnson (now the film critic for Maclean's magazine) and Scenes, by E.J. Carson, now better known as Ed Carson, head of Random House of Canada. `It was a book of nature poems, about canoeing in Algonquin Park,' Inkster said. `It did terribly but it's still in print, after 14 years. That's one of the things a little literary press does.'

Since going out on their own, the Inksters have published 85 books, including works by such well-known writers as Clark Blaise, Marilyn Bowering, David Carpenter, Rikki Ducornet, Louis Dudek, Mark Frutkin, Hugh Hood, Irving Layton, Susan Musgrave, James Reaney, Robin Skelton, Ray Smith, Jane Urquhart and Adele Wiseman. The Porcupine's Quill publishes eight or nine books a year these days, and has net sales of about $45,000.

Porcupine's Quill books are significant in literary terms, but what sets them apart from most of the hundreds and thousands of other books published yearly in Canada is the loving care of their design and production. Hardly any trade fiction is printed in Canada with sewn bindings, for instance, but that's the only way The Porcupine's Quill works.

The bindings, sewn on a machine built in 1907, combined with the high-grade paper stocks Inkster also insists on, result in books that are built to last.

The catalogue An Honest Trade, prepared by Inkster for a 1983 exhibit of Quill-produced books presented at the Banff School of Fine Arts and several other locations, contains physical descriptions of the books that are downright lyrical. Consider this one, for Burnett's odd little novel Skiamachia: `Sewn paperback printed on Warren's Lustro Dull Cream, with Strathmore Grandee barcelona grey endpapers. Cover is black on Strathmore Grandee white/navarre blue duplex, plus white hot foil-stamping. Typeset in Baskerville by Howarth & Smith (Toronto), titling is Castellar initials, hand-pasted from PMT's.' It's enough to make a romantic shiver.

`Each one of these areas of quality costs money,' Inkster said. `It's hard to find people willing to pay for it.' Writers love this sort of quality in their books, and so do a surprising number of other publishers. The Porcupine's Quill has printed books for many other publishers over the years, including Black Moss, Exile, Penumbra, Prise de Parole, Aya, Mosaic, Boston Mills, Red Kite, Netherlandic and Brick.

`Our publishing business is largely supported by the printing business, and to a lesser extent by grants,' Inkster said. `What makes money is designing, printing and binding for other publishers.' The Porcupine's Quill has had books that do well commercially, in small press terms, including several young adult novels that keep going into reprints. James Reaney's The Boy With An R In His Hand, for instance, has sold 5,000 copies since 1984 and is into its fifth printing. Inkster sees more young adult novels in the Quill's future, perhaps through the Literary Press Group, a co-operative sales organization for the country's small publishers.

`It's what we'll have to do to survive,' he said. `Free trade won't give us access to the American market. What we need is more access to the Canadian market.'

A more typical Quill book in many ways is George Johnston's Collected Poems, a beautiful book just published by The Porcupine's Quill. Inkster printed 500 copies of the book; total advance trade sales in Canada were 45 copies. `That book cost me $12,000 to produce, and it's beautiful,' he said. `But it's pretty clear we're not going to stay in business if we depend on publishing books like that.' Inkster doesn't even bother with costing sheets, which most publishers use to calculate book prices by factoring in the size of the print run, the type and size of paper, the number of pages, the method of binding, etc.

`There would be no point,' he said. `If I did a proper costing, it would give me a ridiculous set of numbers. I'd have to charge $25 for a paperback edition of George Johnston's poems.'

So is Inkster happy? He smiles and nods, but the question leads him to thoughts of tight money, tight margins and the GST.

`You'd think after 20 years of doing the same thing, it would get easier,' he said. `But it doesn't. It gets harder and harder.'

H. J. Kirchhoff, July 1990

Canada's Loveliest Books are Made in Erin?

© 1992 The Montreal Gazette

You're imagining The Porcupine's Quill.

Since 1974, Tim and Elke Inkster have been operating this unique enterprise out of their combined home and printing shop in the little town of Erin, Ontario, about 100 kilometres northwest of Toronto. They and a handful of employees support themselves by printing books and magazines for other Canadian publishers - if you examine the copyright page of any unusually good-looking small-press book, chances are that it will have been printed and bound on `acid-free Zephyr Antique laid' paper at The Porcupine's Quill.

`The way I look at it,' Tim Inkster told me the other day, `the printing excellence we're known for is a very sophisticated and understated marketing tool. The authors we publish are important, and we want to make sure their works last.'

But there's more to it than that. Just think of the magnificent cover that graces George Johnston's collected poems, Endeared by Dark. Since Johnston is a noted translator from Old Norse, Inkster decided that a Viking motif would be appropriate for the book. His unofficial editor-in-chief, John Metcalf, found a photograph of the celebrated Oseberg Ship in Norway; but the photo was not good enough to reproduce directly. So Inkster passed it to an artist, Virgil Burnett; and from Burnett's pen-and-ink drawing, Inkster had a magnesium die made. Onto each cover, the die was then foil-stamped by hand.

A complicated process - but the result is a joy to behold. `It's about as nice a production as I've ever had,' Johnston says dryly. Against a pale, gray-blue background, the ship's embossed prow soars in gold. `Visually, it's something of a ghost ship,' Inkster explains. `The way you perceive the image changes according to your point of view. It's designed to sail through your imagination.'

And one way or another, that's what a lot of Porcupine's Quill books have been doing of late. Two of them, by Terry Griggs and Don Dickinson, were nominated for the 1991 Governor-General's Award for fiction. A volume of photographs by Montreal's Sam Tata sold out soon after publication; Inkster plans to reprint the book this year.

And to celebrate Irving Layton's 80th birthday last month, it was The Porcupine's Quill, rather than a large and famous press, that published his selected love poems, Dance With Desire. I'm told that about 200 people had to be turned away from the book's standing-room-only launch in an Ottawa café.

The Porcupine's Quill now has 92 titles in print. A surprising number of its books have a Montreal connection, starting with the very first: Marzipan Lies, a volume of poems by Brian Johnson. (Back in 1974 he was labour reporter at The Gazette; nowadays he's a respected magazine journalist in Toronto.) The press's new series of reprints goes under the name `Sherbrooke Street,' not only because of John Metcalf's old association with Montreal, but also because, as Inkster wryly remarks. `I suffered for four years at the hands of the Jesuits in Loyola High School.' So far, Sherbrooke Street reprints have included books by Layton, Louis Dudek, Clark Blaise and Ray Smith, all of them closely linked to this city.

For the last three years, Inkster has had little hand in choosing the books he so brilliantly publishes. That task has been placed largely in the hands of novelist John Metcalf: famous for his curmudgeonly attitude to Canadian literature, less famous for his shrewd and generous championing of young (and not so young) authors. The irony is that Metcalf, who has loudly complained about the destructive impact of Canada Council subsidies, works for a press that couldn't exist without Canada Council money. He works, please note, for free.

Metcalf has high ambitions for The Porcupine's Quill. `I have a very strong vision of what I want the press to be,' he told me: `the Canadian equivalent of Faber & Faber in London. I just want the best damn literary press in the country. I'd like young writers, if they were faced with a choice between Macmillan and ourselves, to say: "I'll go to The Porcupine's Quill, that's where the action is."'

Over the next year, action at the press will include the appearance of John Newlove's selected poems, of a new short-story collection by Hugh Hood (with the marvellous title You'll Catch Your Death) and of Ray Smith's novel A Night at the Opera. `It's one of the most eccentric goddamn books I've ever read,' Metcalf says cheerfully. `I'm very proud of it.'

Mark Abley, April 1992