Jacket 16 — March 2002 | # 16 Contents
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New Zealand featureMark PirieAlan Brunton as Publisher: A Personal Recollectionand two poemsThis piece is 1,600 words or about four printed pages long.
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I met Alan Brunton (1946–2002) just the one time. But the memory stuck with me. He was an immediate presence. |
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The first books we got photocopied, the covers offset, and then we folded and glued them together. At one point, we were driving out to Naenae, to the lamination place and then to Petone for the gluing. One garage after another, we were a garage brand. |
However, Alan’s productions soon moved up a gear or two in the early Noughties. Alan found a designer, Grant Sutherland, and he produced some very up-market looking publications that Alan was very pleased with, in particular Martin Edmond’s Fenua Imi, which Alan sent to me in the mail as soon as it was printed. |
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AB: I ask charming people at parties, ‘Do you have an idea for an essay or a script?’ As for poetry, I like wisdom to be attached, something thought-provoking; with swing, too. It’s not hard to get published in New Zealand. So many books ... so much production, most of it unadventurous. Bumper is meant to get something started, tossing ideas like small change into the fountain of possibilities; then move on, head out for the de-territory. I like to publish what I like to read. |
Down-to-earth, to the point, but with a good sense of humour. That’s how Alan worked, but underlying it all was a serious intention. And Alan made his intentions clear inside each book that he produced. Bumper Books were publishing ‘experimental texts & investigative cultural studies charting moments when definitions changed’. |
BibliographyO’Leary, Michael, Alternative Small Press Publishing in New Zealand, Wellington: Original Books, 2002.
Pirie, Mark, ‘Alan Brunton Gets Jaamed: An Interview with Alan Brunton’, JAAM 16 (2001), 66–76. |
Two poemsThe Day A.B. Died(For Alan, on the wild-side)
It is 9.40 a.m. in Wellington, FlâneurFor Brian Bell (1929–2000)
‘...every person who bought him a drink and was
Sometimes Berhampore seems a long way away * the brian bell reader, Bumper Books, 2001 |
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Jacket 16 — March 2002
Contents page This material is copyright © Mark Pirie
and Jacket magazine 2002 |