Sourdough

Melbourne : Electio Editions, 2011. Octavo, publisher’s orange Zerkall Nideggen mouldmade paper wrapper, housed in a red cloth covered folding clamshell box, 17 pp., with numerous illustrations; internally pristine, a fine copy. Signed and numbered by the poet. Number 4 of 26 copies.

The Alphabeta series is a set of books of poems, each of a set number of pages, that the printer has offered to various poets he wishes to print. Loney says that “the ‘recipe’ for the poems is quite restricted by the smallness of my bench-top Albion press, particularly in the length of the line that is available to the poet.”

Alan Loney is a noted writer, poet, publisher and printer. Born in New Zealand in 1940, he published his first book of poems in Dunedin in 1971, and has directed a number of private presses in New Zealand and Australia. Loney has worked with a number of distinguished writers, poets and artists across North America and the Asia Pacific, his works are collected by a number of institutions and private collectors. Loney has lived in Melbourne since 1998.