The caledonia writing series
(a chronicle)
“
Your modest account of all that time and effort really moved me very much – for whatever that is worth.
”
The Caledonia Writing Series.
A CHRONICLE/BIBLIOGRAPHY & VISUAL ARCHIVE
Gorse Press. 1984
Literary activity is never separate from the various contexts, situations and circumstances it arises from. In many respects, it is precisely the contexts and materials that really define it. The Caledonia Writing Series as I look at the history of it now, is a cupboard full of books, a bibliography, a stream of images (in some cases blurred) memory and anecdote. But whatever happened always seemed human, and any version of the story, by that fact, defies a conventional chronological history. Friend and fellow printer, Harvey Chometsky, asked me the other day, "Do you remember when we plugged the Dodson in for the first time without a rheostat and how the damn thing was going so fast it danced all over the floor?" I had forgotten that image: a huge letterpress ferociously opening and closing, dancing a crazy dance - clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk - shifting its own cast iron weight with such speed that we wondered what kind of magic it would require from us to actually print on it. There are many stories like that.