‘Small publishers …’

Michael Caines has written a nice post for the TLS blog about Joanna Walsh’s “Shklovsky’s Zoo” and Piece of Paper Press—as well as some other artists’ book miniatures:

Take a piece of A4 paper. Fold it in half (reducing it to A5 size), then twice more (A6; A7). A little more unfolding and refolding, interrupted by one snip of the scissors, and there you have it – a booklet of eight pages. Stitch it and trim the edges. Now all you have to do is cover it with suitable words and pictures … I read the A7-sized Shklovsky’s Zoo by Joanna Walsh (published earlier this year by Tony White’s deliberately lo-fi and generous-spirited Piece of Paper Press) as a complimentary complement: it’s not about reading the book itself but trying to get hold of a copy, as well as a writing residency, Kafka, the narrator coming adrift (a relationship has ended, and the fellow writing residents aren’t exactly her cup of tea). Or it’s about those things and it’s not … That seems like plenty to find tucked away in a few pages made from a single sheet of paper.