The Porcupine's Quill

The Porcupine’s Quill was incorporated in 1974, originally as the production arm of Dave Godfrey’s Press Porcépic. PQL published its first title in 1975, Brian Johnson’s first and only book of poems, Marzipan Lies. Brian Johnson is currently the film critic for Maclean’s and claims to have met Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, twice! Many of the early titles were slim volumes written by poets Tim Inkster had met as a student at the University of Toronto — amongst them Ed Carson who until recently was President of Penguin Canada, and Brian Henderson who is currently the publisher at Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

In 1978 PQL published Une bonne trentaine by Erin Village resident Robert Dickson. Mr Dickson was awarded the Governor General’s award for poetry (en français) twenty-four years later. ‘Au nord du notre vie’, a poem from that same collection, was subsequently recorded by Sudbury-based rock ensemble CANO and eventually came to be recognized as the anthem of the franco-ontarienne cultural movement.

The Porcupine’s Quill published Jane Urquhart’s little poetry book The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan in 1983, and her first and only collection of stories, Storm Glass, in 1987. Jane Urquhart has subsequently achieved international fame and fortune with her novels (published by McClelland & Stewart) such as The Whirlpool, Changing Heaven, Away, The Underpainter, The Stone Carvers, and most recently, A Map of Glass.

Other novelists who published with the Porcupine�s Quill early in their careers include Steven Heighton, Andrew Pyper, Mary Swan, Russell Smith, Gil Adamson, Michael Winter, Elizabeth Hay and Annabel Lyon.

In 1993 PQL won the Governor General’s award for poetry with Don Coles’ Forests of the Medieval World. In 2000 PQL won the Trillium Prize for Don Coles’ Kurgan.

In the current year, Evidence by Ian Colford was shortlisted for the Thomas H Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize, took first place in the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Uproar by Jack MacLeod was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal. Abebooks chose The Essential P K Page as one of ten outstanding books of poetry for a feature during National Poetry Month in April. In the United States, ForeWord magazine (Traverse City, MI) cited five PQL publications in its Book of the Year (BoTY) Award — Off the Wall by Tony Urquhart, Drawing on Type by Frank Newfeld, Sailor Girl by Sheree-Lee Olson, Evidence by Ian Colford and A Voweller’s Bestiary by JonArno Lawson. The Independent Publisher (IPPY) awards presented a silver medal to Ian Colford’s Evidence and a bronze medal to Sheree-Lee Olson’s Sailor Girl. The Alcuin Society of Vancouver cited Off the Wall by Tony Urquhart, The Essential P K Page, and A Wood Engraver’s Alphabet by G. Brender à Brandis in its 27th annual Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada competition.

 

Upcoming. Spring 2010 Releases.

 

New. Fall 2009 Releases.

 

The Essential Poets Series.

‘Will the poems that one has made, in answer to some deepseated prompting, find readers in the big world and stay with them for a while? Of the thousand thousand pages of verse that are published and recited, only a few will do this, and who knows which ones, or what about them will make them remembered?’ — George Johnston

 

 

On Canada Day (2008) both Tim and Elke Inkster were appointed to the Order of Canada ‘For their distinctive contributions to publishing in Canada and for their promotion of new authors, as co-founders of The Porcupine's Quill, a small press known for the award-winning beauty and quality of its books.’ Tim Inkster has also received the Sixth Annual (2003) Janice Handford award which honours ‘an individual who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of small press publishing in Canada.’

The Porcupine’s Quill is remarkable in Canadian publishing in that most of the physical production of our journal is completed in-house at the shop on the Main Street of Erin Village. We print on a twenty-five inch Heidelberg KORD, typically onto acid-free Zephyr Antique laid. The sheets are then folded, and sewn into signatures on a 1907 model Smyth National Book Sewing machine.

To take a virtual tour of the pressroom, visit us at YouTube for a discussion of offset printing in general, and the operation of a Heidelberg KORD in particular. Other videos include Four Colour Printing, Smyth Sewing and Wood Engraving. Photographs of production machinery used on these pages were taken by Sandra Traversy on site at the printing office of the Porcupine's Quill, December 2008.