Stilt Jack

Poems by JOHN THOMPSON

2024 / Limited Edition Book / VH0027
[Gaspereau Press Imprint]

¶ Stilt Jack is a sequence of 38 ghazals written by John Thompson (1938–1976) and first published in 1978 following Thompson’s tragic death. These often beguiling poems resonate with the complexities of Thompson’s life and locale, skillfully connecting the speaker’s stark experiences with the expansive world of literature and mythology. As Thompson writes in his introduction: “The ghazal allows the imagination to move by its own nature: discovering an alien design, illogical and without sense—a chart of the disorderly, against false reason and the tacking together of poor narratives. It is the poem of contrasts, dreams, astonishing leaps.” As Peter Sanger comments in Sea Run: Notes on John Thompson’s Stilt Jack: “This is poetry attempting to do one of the tasks of sacred texts: parting the waters. It is poetry speaking ‘unspoken words’ and seeing ‘unseen gods.’”

Specification: Typeset in Linotype Electra. Printed in black and honey brown on Hahnemühle Bugra mouldmade paper. Seven sheets printed ‘four-up’, folded into 8-page signatures and trimmed to 19 × 29.8 cm. Handsewn. Doubled endpapers of brown Hahnemühle Bugra mouldmade paper. Bound in a black Japanese cloth. Paper label on the spine printed in brown. Enfolded in a charcoal Strathmore Grandee machine-made paper jacket printed in honey brown and black from photopolymer. Issued in a black paper wrapper printed in opaque white from photopolymer.

56 pages + doubled endpapers
Limited edition of 45 numbered copies­
CND $700 + shipping & taxes

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