Bull Thistle Press

Bull Thistle Press ~ Vermont (Greg Joly)

Greg Joly: "The name Bull Thistle I picked up from some early nineteenth-century agricultural texts I was going through. With the loss of a rural agricultural society in the USA, an entire language has been lost. Letterpress is going the way of illuminated manuscripts. I'm a Taurus, hence bull. A thistle is a tough, thorned weed with a deep tap root. Farmers combat the bull thistle because it spreads easily in open fields, i.e., a noxious interloper. That's what I want the press to stand for – works by those outside the mainstream of cultivated poetry who stick in your side and stay with you. These are folks with deep tap roots. They pull nutrients up from a subsoil this culture is driving hard to blacktop. I provide the open field."


I AM THE GARDEN By Wendy Dorsel Fisher Illustrated by Dan Fisher West Windham, Vermont: Bull Thistle Press, 2002. Edition of 55. 10.5 x 9.5 x 1.5"; 30 pages. Includes 17 tipped-in Giclée prints. One fold out print. Text and set in ATF Garamond and letterpress printed with specially mixed brown and umber inks. Printed on cinnamon paper hand-made at Langdell Paper in East Topsham, Vermont. Hand stitched with ribbons and head bands. End-sheets with hand-pulled smally leaf paper. Cased in binder's board of Archival Quality with twine closure. Cloth bound. Designed and typeset by Greg Joly. Wendy Dorsel Fisher, a poet and reviewer, wrote the text and her husband, Dan Fisher, did the accompanying illustrations. The printing and book design were a collaboration with their friend, Greg Joly. Wendy Dorsel Fisher: "The story of how the book came to be involves the death and burial of a small blind terrier, a two-acre garden in the mountains of Western North Carolina, a wise old woman, an alcoholic folksinger and a poet, painter and printer who found each other in a small rural town in southern Vermont." $750	Click image for more

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