Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen in Berwick

Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen read from her new collection of poetry, Lean-To, earlier this month at Glad Gardens Family Farm Market & Greenhouses in Berwick, Nova Scotia.

Photo Credit: Jocelyn Doucette

Tonja and the Lean-To Launch

Last night, Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen launched her new collection, Lean-To, at Local Jo Cafe & Market in Halifax.

Tonja currently lives in Halifax but she was born in Saskatoon and spent her childhood first in Calgary, and later on a farm in Saskatchewan. Her first collection, Clay Birds, won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry in 1996. Her second collection Or was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award in 2004. Lean-To is Tonja's second collection with Gaspereau Press. In 2005, we published her chapbook, August, a suite of fourteen poems.

Gaspereau Press Spring Poetry Tra-la

National Poetry Month is in full swing and last week, Carmine Starnino, Anne Simpson and Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen brought a little taste of Gaspereau Press to Toronto. All three were on hand to read from their new collections at Ben McNally Books.

National Poetry Month

Today’s poem is from our newly released book, Lean-to, by Halifax poem Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen. “Tin” is from a longer suite of poems called “August after August” which won the the CBC Literary Award for poetry in 2005. — AS


Tin
Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen

Expecting tin can lanterns, a party:
cold trout on blue willow, spark of the river’s tinsel.

The aluminum canoe, a tinderbox we slide ourselves into
tipsy on the river’s sulk.

An anniversary gift, better than confections
or silks. Scissors won’t open it. A secret

the clouds conjugate north of the weir.
Tenir. To hold. Tongues of silt.

August: the aspens open their tissues, temptations.
The river, a rival

current. On the surface: flotsam, a million proofs.
Clutching the paddle, shove out the thoughts that nudge—

Copyright © Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen, 2009.

The First Day of Spring

The first day of spring! And we’re getting close to the release dates for some of our spring 2009 titles. Most of the books are now progressing through the production line, some on press, some in sheets, some sewn, some bound. This time of year it’s hard to find a flat surface in the printshop that isn’t piled up with paper which is in some state of becoming a book. This week, as well as tidying up the last few details on the text of Anne Simpson’s essay collection The Marram Grass, I also used the Vandercook 219 letterpress in my office to print a few book jackets for spring titles and an invitation to our upcoming Spring Poetry Tra-la at Ben McNally Books in Toronto. That is, when I wasn’t busy crushing cupcakes. —AS

Andrew's Printshop Review

Things are getting busy in the printshop again after a bit of a break over the Christmas holiday. As usual, there are many different projects at many different stages, but my main focus at the moment is on designing the guts of new poetry books by Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen and Carmine Starnino, and the jacket for Robert Bringhurst’s Selected Poems. Kate and I are also trying to get the spring catalogue to press – which is several weeks overdue on my account. I’ve been distracted with both commercial design jobs and the production of two letterpress books.

















This week I started to print the green ‘spot’ colour on our forthcoming letterpress book, Walking, an essay by Henry David Thoreau. The printing of the text is complete, and after I print all the drop capitals and such I’ll be ready to print Wesley Bate’s three engravings from the blocks. The paper is a wonderful German sheet called Biblio. The green is PMS 443, a selection inspired by Rockwell Kent.

















Speaking of letterpress books, the printing of Don McKay’s The Muskwa Assemblage is complete, but we’re still trying to find time to make the paper for the jacket. More accurately, as I told Don, we’re still trying to find time to make the equipment we need to make the paper for his jackets. I’ll include some pictures of our papermaking process in a forthcoming post. In the meantime, Don was good enough to send us some cotton fibre to help make the paper for his book jackets – an old pair of his own blue jeans.