Haiku na Feirme

Ireland’s rural landscape is both subject and setting in this sequence of twenty haikus by John FitzGerald. The traditional Japanese haiku’s observance of nature is adapted to a new Hibernian hybrid which fuses perception with experience to create distinct occasions of meaning and sound. Taking his inspiration from the land and its plant, animal and human inhabitants, these poems are offered as verbal exclamations, short instances of lived and felt experience which follow the seasons and celebrate the richness and diversity of life on the land. Jamie Murphy has produced six abstract woodblock prints which act as pauses in the text. Each printed in seven layers using a total of 22 colours, these visual interventions are inspired by the poet's immediate landscape and printed from 300 year old Irish oak which fell there some years ago.

Designed, typeset and letterpress printed by Jamie Murphy (at his newly finished home studio). John FitzGerald penned the haikus from spring 2019 through to summer 2021. Cast by Rainer Gerstenberg in Frankfurt, the type is Frutiger’s Méridien Italic (1966), printed onto damp 65-130 gsm Griffen Mill, the last remaining sheets of Irish hand-made paper, purchased from the mill on their retirement in early 2020. The visual interventions have been printed directly from prepared oak blocks onto 39 gsm Japanese Hosokawa.

Less than 100 copies. The bindings were executed by Tom Duffy and family. 70 numbered copies were quarter bound in painted Griffen Mill paper over boards, held in a slipcase. Marked i–iv, four similar copies were reserved for collaborators. 26 lettered copies were bound in altered goat prepared by Kate Holland, presented in a cloth covered solander box.