DOMINION

2002; edition 30 + 5 APs
51cm x 37cm, 94pp

Polychrome letterpress printing on Zerkall Gehammert paper, with wood letter, metal type, 12pt rules, 36pt round ornaments, and one steel set square and one steel right angle rule, both mounted to type height. The book is hand sewn and bound in reversed goatskin, in an Islamic, or map-style wrap-around binding, with handmade flax papers lining the inside. The whole is wrapped in black felt. 'Dominion' is printed with the rough urgency of earlier books such as 'HORSE' and 'Broken rules and double crosses'.

'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, and merrily did we drop, below the kirk, below the hill, below the lighthouse top.'
Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The book deploys found geometric tools, brought to type height, to suggest the plotting of land by the squaring and quartering of the space on the page, and the boxing of its compass. A progression of poems move from the old world of Europe to the Great Plains of North America, which were secured, divided up, then broken by the plough.

'Dominion', while continuing the pursuit of the idea of the double to be found in previous titles, progresses towards its centre and unravels back to its beginning. In this 'Dominion' configures exile and return. At the start and end of each of the sections of the book severe rectilinear geometries are disrupted and married to motifs gained from the equilateral triangle and the cross. The resultant rich pages contrasts with the wilderness at the core of this work, and the 'impossibility of the marrying of 3 and 4'.

A man walked into Egypt looking for a lost pearl. Local sorcerers captured his mind, their spells had him forgetting who he was, where he was from, and where he was going. Living on in his old home his true self sent messages to him. These words on the road awoke his memory, reminding him of his identity. And on that road of return he met his approaching double, rejoicing.

'...this continent circumscribes a hole' - KC 2002