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10 COPIES LEFT for individual purchase!

ISBN 0-9733952-5-7
Chapbook edition of 100
$80.00

In the Japanese tradition of the utaniki, or song-diary, Paper Lanterns: 25 Postcards from Asia is a collection of poems and prose meditations based on material that first appeared in Steven Heighton's second book, Foreign Ghosts. Published in a small edition in 1989, Foreign Ghosts has long been unavailable. Paper Lanterns not only revisits and revises some of the best work from that collection, it also includes photographs, by Mary Huggard, that were taken while the couple was in Asia. This chapbook integrates images with poetry and prose into a journal-inspired design, completing an Asian journey that began in Hong Kong almost twenty years ago.

Chapbook edition is limited to 100 copies, signed and numbered by the author. The Japanese tortoise-shell stab binding (kikko toji) has been hand sewn with linen thread. Inner binding secured with twisted strings of paper (koyori) . Printed on Neenah columns 60lb text paper in pistachio with Lokta end papers in red. The cover stock is St. Armand handmade paper in brown turtle, backed with Japanese Yuzen. Letterpress cover handset and printed on a platen press. Chapbook includes six full colour “postcards” with images by Mary Huggard. Chapbook and postcards designed by Dawn Kresan, and typeset in Centaur and CK Olden Days.

REVIEW QUOTE:

"Despite familiar adages about books and their covers, when it comes to chapbooks a description of the physicality of a book is germane. Paper Lanterns is an 100-copy edition, with Lokta end papers in red, St. Armand handmade paper in brown turtle, and attached Japanese Yuzen paper in brown blossoms. It is stunningly beautiful. The book also features six vivid colour photographs by Mary Huggard, four of which have literal “postcards” on the back—a date, a place, a blurry stamp, and prose which starts out grounded in the specifics of a place and wanders into the philosophical... This slender chapbook from Palimpsest Press (which adapts material from Heighton’s 1989 collection Foreign Ghosts) is a foreign delicacy to be savoured, the perfect souvenir to be treasured."

—Books in Canada