A Short Story of Falling by Alice Oswald, with metal engravings by Maribel Mas (numbered, limited edition of 75 copies.)

£95.00

75 copies of this beautiful book have been made. Each has been numbered. 

The publication was masterminded by Andrew Moorhouse. A Rochdale man with no 'in' in the publishing world who was inspired by the words of John Updike, “a book is beautiful in its relation to the human hand, to the human eye, to the human brain, and to the human spirit,"  Thus Moorhouse began his Fine Press Poetry imprint - a true labour of love that has produced several gorgeous books. This particular one was produced during the lockdown summer of 2020.

Of poetry, Alice Oswald writes: “I look forward to thinking about all forms of poetry, but particularly the fugitive airborne forms.”

Maribel Mas writes of her engravings: "The metal plates printed in this book were traced with aid of “Burmester” curves, wooden templates developed at the end of the nineteenth century for technical drawings in industrial design and architecture. I was trying to rediscover these obsolete tools by applying them in a way they weren’t intended. Instead of just using segments of these curves, I used the entire template, rotating it from a single fixed point with intervals of just a few millimetres. The drawing process was very slow, but little by little a figure emerged on the surface of the plate, with lines that seemed to vibrate as they crossed around an empty centre.

The same template can be used for two or three different drawings; by changing the point of rotation, completely unexpected things happen. In this sense the working process is more intuitive than rational. I can’t control the final outcome, I just keep going, supporting the drawing as it grows and observing whether or not it develops its own presence. The decision of when to stop depends on the boundaries of the paper. A drawing only can expand within these physical limits, but it can also grow inside them, into its own depth. I would liken this to the paradox of freedom.