The Porcupine's Quill
Celebrating thirty-five years on the Main Street
of Erin Village, Wellington County
Awards & Acclaim: 2002
Girls and Handsome Dogs by Norm SibumA lonely woman in the country attempts a crossword during a thunderstorm. Police stop a suspicious character who endeavours to explain his unusual behaviour. On his way to a dinner date, a man walks and wonders if his ‘need’ is too obvious. Often comic, sometimes somber, these poems offer a narrative of the exotic and the ordinary, the ridiculous and the sublime.
2002—A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry,
Winner
Dr Swarthmore by Alexander ScalaIt’s rural Indiana in the year 1900, and the laughs come thick and fast as Dr. Swarthmore, a clergyman with a cigar fetish, attempts to sell doomsday to his fellow Hoosiers at fifty cents per doom.
2002—Globe Top 100,
Commended
When Words Deny the World by Stephen Henighan‘It’s the liveliest, most cogently argued, most provocative and most infuriatingly self-satisfied work of literary criticism to be published in this country in at least the last decade.’
2002—Globe Top 100,
Commended
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.
The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) is also gratefully acknowledged.