The Porcupine's Quill
Celebrating thirty-five years on the Main Street
of Erin Village, Wellington County
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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.
“The Porcupine's Quill published Robin Skelton's Limits in the 70's, and little that any poet in the country has done since has topped it for lyricism and cross-cultural integration. Like so much of PQ's good work, it has vanished from print — but not from conciousness. PQ may not be vindicated in the marketplace, but it has kept a dream of a literature of craft alive enough for two generations to keep reinventing it. For this, it has more use than the entire Canada Council writing and publishing section. It would be wild if Tim Inkster could somehow get offered the gig as our next Governor General so he could turn it down. No point taking on a job for which he is overqualified. By publishing my novel Carnival, Tim and Elke helped keep me on the lyrical path when I was stonewalled by social realists and deconstructionists, long enough for me to integrate their work into my craft. Literature takes time, and PQ has given it to me, and to us.” —Harold Rhenisch, author of Carnival