The Porcupine's Quill
Celebrating forty years on the Main Street
of Erin Village, Wellington County
BOOKS IN PRINT
The Porcupine's Quill Reader by John Metcalf and Tim Inkster
‘The Porcupine’s Quill Reader celebrates and promotes the work of a small publishing house in the village of Erin, Ontario. The fact that authors published here have had four Governor General Award nominations in four years suggest that editor John Metcalf and publisher Tim Inkster must be doing something right. The Reader contains 20 short stories and assorted gossipy anecdotes and photographs of the authors giving readings and socializing. (And yes, this creates a feeling of being the voyeur at the family picnic, and yes, you might wonder why you would want to be a voyeur there of all places.) Inkster has long been known for quality book design and treats readers to brief arcane chats about typeface selection and paper size. Interesting if you like knowing why some books look and feel so much better than others, easy to skip if you don’t.’
Table of contents
John Metcalf, Introduction
Gil Adamson, Bishop and the Aunties
Caroline Adderson, Shiners
Clark Blaise, Meditations on Starch
Mary Borsky, Maps of the Known World
Don Dickinson, Blue Husbands
Keath Fraser, Thin Ice
Terry Griggs, Man with the Axe
Steven Heighton, The Beautiful Tennessee Waltz
Hugh Hood, The River Behind Things
Elise Levine, Boy
Carol Malyon, Cockroach Dreams
K.D. Miller, The Real Halloween
James Reaney, The Box Social
Patricia Robertson, City of Orphans
Leon Rooke, Muffins
Leo Simpson, Imogene Wedekind
Ray Smith, Waltherrott
Russell Smith, The Janni Bolo Show
Jane Urquhart, Storm Glass.
Author comments
The Porcupine’s Quill has been described in The Toronto Star as ‘one of Canada’s best small presses’. But for Tim and Elke Inkster and for me there is nothing ‘small’ about the press at all. We publish writers from coast to coast and our single criterion for acceptance is excellence. We think of ourselves as a national rather than regional press and as of national importance.
When I drifted into editing for Tim and Elke I wanted to favour the short story as a genre and I wanted to publish prose which was stylistically innovative. I was looking for excitement. I was looking for energy. I was looking for language that could strut and flaunt. I was looking for elegance and sophistication. I wanted to draw together into one place as many talented writers as I could find so that together we could assert relentlessly literature’s importance and burn like a beacon in the gloom of Canada’s uncertainties.
The Porcupine’s Quill Reader offers sips and snippets of the often dazzling writing we’ve been publishing over the last few years. It is the vastly entertaining record of a press that has become something of a movement. The movement doesn’t embrace any particular ‘ism’ but all our writers share an aesthetic approach to writing and many of our writers propose new writers to me. In that way we all share in the shape and progress of the press.
The Reader also offers an array of informal photographs of our authors at readings and launches. These events have become almost legendary. Never before in Canada has a book documented the lighter moments of the literary life -- dinners at the BamBoo and readings in the Taddle Creek Series at the Rivoli on Queen Street West, readings in Ottawa at Magnum Books and at the Globe on Elgin Street, celebrations at Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, high jinks at the press itself in Erin.
The Reader offers a feast of language. This is writing to savour. Whether you’re reading the breathless comedy of Terry Griggs or the precise wit of Ray Smith, the slow quiet music of Mary Borsky or the Waugh-like clarity of Russell Smith, you are plugged into writing at high voltage. This is some of the most exciting writing Canada has ever produced.
The Reader offers other pleasures. Paragraph Magazine wrote: ‘Publisher-printer Tim Inkster is something of a legend in the world of Canadian letters.... The books his Porcupine’s Quill produces are in themselves works of art; imaginatively designed, they’re printed and bound in ways which pay homage to the craft of bookmaking.’
The Reader, like all the books of the Porcupine’s Quill, is handsome as a physical object, a pleasure to hold and a delight to read.
—John Metcalf
John Metcalf was born in Carlisle, England, and was educated at the University of Bristol. He emigrated to Canada in 1962. In addition to working on his own writings (novels, stories and essays), he held for many years the unsalaried post of Senior Editor of the Porcupine’ Quill. John Metcalf is the editor of Canadian Notes and Queries and book publisher Biblioasis. He resides in Ottawa with his wife, Myrna.
Tim Inkster’s proudest moment, as a poet, was the inclusion of "In Search of Eldorado" (from A Crown Prince Waits for a Train) in the 1975 edition of the Penguin Book of Canadian Verse edited by Ralph Gustafson. His most recent collection was Blue Angel (Black Moss, 1981) after which he stopped writing poems in favour of a career in the book publishing industry. The Crown Prince Waits for a Train is one of only two Porcupine’s Quill publications from the 1970s that are still available in the original edition, at the original price.
The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) is also gratefully acknowledged.
