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A title from The Old School Press Twelve haiku for winter A dozen of Basho's
haiku that touch on winter and life itself | |
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About the book In 2024 we made our second trip to Japan, this time visiting the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku in the south-west. I was determined to bring back some paper. In our newsletter about it you can read the story of my purchases: a small parcel of a kozo paper and sheets of coloured mitsumata paper, all of which I was sure I would find a use for. I sat on the paper until the middle of 2026. I had been reading the translations of some of the poet Basho's haiku and was taken by the possibility of gathering a dozen that reflected on winter, both the season of nature and of life. Having all but finished work on Bembo's Aetna, it was an ideal small project that would make use of the small stashes of paper that came back from Japan with us. About the edition The text is all hand-set in 18pt foundry Optima. The book - more a booklet - consists of two folded sheets of the kozo paper bearing the haiku, with a sheet of pink mitsumata paper bracketing them, and a third sheet of kozo paper bearing the title page and colophon wrapped around all. Looking for a suitable paper for the limp cover amongst my stocks, I found I still had sheets of the grey-blue speckled handmade paper from the Larroque mill that I used for the covers of Chesil Beach - just the right size and number of sheets. It took me a while to realise that they were also perfect as they give a convincing impression of snow falling against a winter sky.
The motif on the front page is 'Leaves of the five-needle pine' which I borrowed from a print from the Momoyogusa series by Kamisaka Sekka.
There are just thirty-three copies, of which twenty-seven are for sale at £45 each. 320mm by 250mm. (978-1-899933-55-6)
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