Electio Editions ~ Australia
(Alan Loney)

Heart Sutra
By Alan Loney
Victoria, Australia: Electio Editions, 2009. Edition of 40.

9.75 x 6.4"; 28 unnumbered pages. Types: Giovanni Mardersteig's Dante and S H de Roos's Libra. Paper: 175gsm BFK Rives Heavyweight, damped for printing on a Pratt-Albion handpress. Images: made from brass rules on loan from the Otakou Press at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and a wood block held at the Press. Further handwork added after printing. Soft cover binding, pamphlet stitched. Housed in orange cloth covered clamshell box.

Alan Loney, introduction: "Heart Sutra follows on from my earlier book, Soma: guarding the body, in that a text from another and very old tradition has been retrieved as a contemporary text for a contemporary poet. I first read the Buddhist Heart Sutra in the translation and commentary of Edward Conze in the early 1960s, and the extraordinary challenge and depth of the text has continued to enlarge my sense of it over the intervening years. The present pared down version has been extracted and modified from a number of English versions variously derived from Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese versions retrieved by Buddhist and other scholars from both the east and the west. For those who may be troubled by a secular reading/rendering of a religious text, the challenge for me has been to see if a religion-based text can be made to speak to anyone whatsoever without violence to its meaning, and yet stand as a positive mutation of the extra-curricular tradition of the philosophia perennis. I am nevertheless deeply grateful to the Buddhist monks and scholars who have for centuries preserved this most difficult, minimalist, and personally challenging account of whatever it is we might call 'reality.'"
$265 (US dollars)

SOMA: guarding the body / poems from the fragments of /
the pre-Socratic philosophers / with typographic images
By Alan Loney
Victoria, Australia: Electio Editions, 2008. Edition of 30.

9.25 x 5.75" (230 x 140 mm); 48 pages. Handmade Magnani 160gsm paper dampened for printing on a Pratt-Albion handpress with Giovanni Mardersteig’s Dante types. The images are made from brass rules and other type decorations, with some handwork, especially with hand-wielded rollers, by the author. Binding and slipcases by Wolfgang Schaefer. Written, designed, printed & sewn by Alan Loney. Of the edition 26 of the 30 are lettered from A to Z and are for sale.

Alan Loney: "I first encountered the pre-Socratic philosophers in Kathleen Freeman’s translation in the early 1960s. Since then I have been an avid reader of these early tough and insightful texts, altho I have never completed a course in reading ancient Greek. Subsequent translations by Guy Davenport, Charles Kahn, Kirk & Raven, T M Robinson, David Gallop, Brooks Haxton and Robert Bringhurst, among others, have continued to enliven my senses of the possible in thoughtful feeling in my own poetic life of the mind. The poems here are derived from several different translations of the pre-Socratics, with additions, omissions, alterations and even downright distortions by the author. While none of my speculations should be attributed to the translating poets and scholars, I nevertheless dedicate this book to them, for most of us know little of the beginnings of secular thought in the West without their labor. An earlier version of the poem was written in 1990 and published in Missing Parts (Hazard Press 1992)."
$1000 (AUD)

ZEPHYROS: the book untitled
By Alan Loney
Victoria, Australia: Electio Editions, 2007. Edition of 30 with 26 copies lettered A to Z for sale.

1445 x 230 mm; 48 pages. Paintings on Magnani mouldmade. Printings on Magnani mouldmade and Zerkall Nideggen mouldmade. Black, red, blue, and gold printing on Zerkall Nideggen mouldmade. Magnani sheets printed in black only. Types: Dante, Civilite, Libra, Franklin Gothic Greek, Open Kapitalen, Castellar. Bound in Cave handmade paper covered boards. In a red cloth-covered slipcase.

Prospectus: "The ancient Greek word Zephyros has a number of meanings: a warm wind as harbinger of spring in the Mediterranean, a light gauze shawl or shirt, a light infantryman, a butterfly, and of course the god of the west wind itself. This book plays on all these meanings, especially punning on the leaves of trees and the leaves of the book, thru a series of fragmentary texts on the nature of the book as an idea and as a reality, accompanied by five handpainted acrylic drawings. While the texts came first and Miriam Morris's drawings were responses to them, the typographical settings of the texts were often done in direct response to the drawings. The result is a variety of settings in various types and a group of colorful and lively original paintings, each keeping close to its own first version, but nevertheless each being also slightly different from the others.

"Zephyros is the 51st book by the printer, the 6th Electio edition, and the 2nd collaboration by Alan Loney & Miriam Morris."
$1,500 AUD

The Flowery Meadow
being Canto XXVIII of PURGATORIO
from DANTE’S LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
Victoria, Australia: Electio Editions, 2005. Edition of 26.

6 x 9"; 39 pages. Dante, Zapf Civilité and Open Kapitalen types printed onto damped Magnani mouldmade paper on a Pratt Albion handpress. Drawings reproduced from magnesium blocks supplied by Hitech All graphics and printed on the handpress. Bound quarter-leather with cloth covered sides and cloth slipcase made by Norbert Herold.

A bilingual presentation (English/Italian). Translation by Chris Wallace-Crabbe: “In translating this Canto…I determined early to treat it as a poem in itself.” Drawings by Bruno Leti: “I comment in lines, colors, and shapes. Those are the tools of my trade.”

Electio Editions: "Continuing the printer’s interest in bilingual texts and the classical literary tradition, the English and Italian texts are interleaved in two colors throughout.”
$1,500 AUD (Three copies remain)

New Leaf
By Alan Loney and Miriam Morris
Victoria, Australia: Electio Editions, 2005. Edition of 100.

6.25 x 9.5"; 10 pages. Dante and Civilité types; magnani mouldmade paper damped for printing on an Albion handpress; khadi Indian handmade cover with the binding sewn at the press. Signed by the poet/printer and the artist.

Electio Editions: "This book features five drawings by one of Australia’s best known viola da gamba players, with poems written by her partner Alan Loney. Each drawing faces one of the poems, and all are printed in color. While the images are not mere illustrations of the individual poems they face, they nonetheless mirror subtly the tone and intention of the poems as a group."
$120 AUD

PRIMA MATERIA
By Alan Loney
Australia: Electio Editions, 2005. Edition of 50.

7.5 x 10"; 27 pages. Printed with a Pratt-Albion handpress on Magnani damped handmade 160 gsm paper. Housed in a red cloth covered portfolio box.

This is the Loney's fiftieth limited edition book. In the introduction Loney discusses his printing career and the types used by his presses. He opened Hawk Press in 1975. Later there was Black Light Press and Holloway Press (with Peter Simpson at the University of Auckland). Since 2004 Electio Editions has been Loney's imprint.

This edition is a type specimen book with examples of the types in use by the press. Included is a new press mark for Electio Editions, designed by Deirdre Hassed. In addition to the specimens, there are illustrations throughout, some in color.
$750 AUD