Ninja Press ~ California
(Carolee Campbell)

Pruned Boughs
By Michael Hannon
Sherman Oaks, California: Ninja Press, 2008. Edition of 100.

4.5 x 10"; 15 pages. The type is hand-set Meridien with Weiss Initials Series III for the display, printed letterpress in three colors onto dampened Frankfurt. A simple decorative device used throughout, printed and hand-brushed with iridescent mica, is from a punch cut by Carolee Campbell, then struck into a matrix by Theo Rehak. The cover is a walnut-stained flax sheet handmade by Bridget O'Malley at Cave Paper. Design, paperwork, and binding by the artist with assistance from Karen Skove Chu in the bindery. There are 100 numbered and signed copies in the edition with an additional 12 lettered hors commerce. Signed by the poet.

Prospectus: "These previously unpublished poems is the third in a series of Ninja Press publications written by this generous and highly favored poet."

Ninja Press: "With its rich walnut covers and stark white text, this slender volume brings into sharp relief the somber prospect invoked by these poems."

Carolee Campbell: "Very pruned. Very chaste. Just the poems on the page."
$200

The Intimate Stranger
By Breyten Breytenbach
2007. Edition of 100.

13 x 7.5"; 40 pages. 100 numbered and signed copies with an additional 10 lettered hors commerce. The type is hand-set Samson and Libra printed letterpress on dampened flax paper handmade especially for this book by Bridget O’Malley at Cave Paper. A horoscope, as well as the multicolored signs and symbols seen throughout the text, are drawn by Carolee Campbell and printed from photopolymer plates. Additional symbols are applied by hand using pure earth pigments. The boards are covered in flax paper hand coated with a mixture of ochre pigment and fine volcanic pumice. A second inner cover holds the text and is sewn into the spine with a thin purple silk cord. An additional hardcover enclosure, handmade by Judi Conant, protects the book and echoes the theme of the artwork using an artful locking device. A separate chapbook containing a legend for the text-inspired signs and symbols completes the edition. It is printed letterpress in eight colors with three additional pigments applied by hand. It is printed on dampened Nideggen in Samson and Libra and is sewn with silk into a flax paper cover. The design, presswork and binding are by Carolee Campbell at Ninja Press with the assistance of Karen Skove Chu in the bindery.

In a language rich with streamlined ornament, Breyten Breytenbach charts the geography of the land while, on a shifting plane, he conjures the landscape of the human heart.

Each journey will be into the unknown but even so
routes are traced the way thoughts and dreams
become words and the words become tracks and
and the tracks turn to sand. Sand moving in a haze
over your vision will be footsteps—your own, those
of the ancestors, those of your companions. Birds
will remember you in the sky, their flight an arrow
in the soil. That’s how you read the paragraphs of
your life.

In this single, long prose poem, every paragraph has been given its own page or double-page spread. Each of the thirty-two pages is embellished with signs and symbols printed in multiple colors which have been inspired by the text.
$1,500

XXIV Short Love Poems
By Bruce Whiteman
2002. Edition of 135.

5" x 5", 38 pages. The book was designed, printed and bound by Campbell.

This is a collection of poems written on the occasion of the poet's 25th wedding anniversary and offered as a gift to his wife. Printed letterpress in four colors, the text paper is Japanese hangashi, the poems are augmented by three cyanotypes, a 19th century photographic process which are sensitized by hand and printed on Velke Losiny paper by the photographer Carolee Campbell. The accordion style binding uses a luminous golden past paper, hand painted by Claire Maziarczyk. Together these elements create the impression of a silken coverlet under which the poem lies.
$325