5 January 2010
We are excited to relay that Canadian artist Wesley W. Bates has agreed to a collaboration with Claire Keegan to make original wood engravings for her book-length short story Night of the Quicken Trees.

17 June 2009
rufus books resumed publishing activities in the form of participating in the Toronto Small Press Book Fair on Saturday, June 13th (http://www.torontosmallpressbookfair.org/). The event had more than 90 exhibitors selling their books and over a dozen authors reading from their works. This included Maureen Scott Harris, who is listed with rufus books for a future project. It's good to be back doing rufusy things again.

3 June 2009
Congratulations to A.F. Moritz on his winning the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize for The Sentinel (House of Anasi Press). Some of the poems from rufus books' own Sound of Hungry Animals were later included in the award-winning The Sentinel. See http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards_summary.php for more details about the prize.

15 December 2008
As per the announcement of 5 March 2008, rufus books will be taking a hiatus from publishing activities until further notice. In the meantime, all available titles may still be purchased through the website. Keep in touch!

5 December 2008
NEW RELEASE

Thomas Joachim Kingston's debut collection of poems, Out of Mind, is at last released. Worth the wait.

15 March 2008
NEW RELEASE

Sound of Hungry Animals by A.F. Moritz with drawings by Rudolf Kurz. This is a special limited edition of 125 copies with letterpress images and hand-binding.

5 March 2008
ANNOUNCEMENT: CESSATION OF PUBLISHING ACTIVITIES
After the release of Thomas Joachim Kingston’s poetry collection, Out of Mind, in the coming months, rufus books will not be adding any new authors to its listing or publishing any new titles until further notice. Available titles may still be purchased online.

17 January 2008
Astute readers may have picked up on a new book being added that had been published in 2006. I do not defend nor relay why this has occurred. It makes sense to rufus and to the author and that's just the way it is. More to the
point, Nature Notes is now available for purchase. Don't fuss that it's two years later.

31 December 2007
Another flow of good words about Whereabouts is found in The Guardian's Saturday issue. Too bad this collection is described in diminutive terms as a "pamphlet" (it may not be your standard Faber but it is with its 52 pages, by definition, a book of over 48 pages), but these words make up for the slip: "Francis's astonishingly assured manipulation of the narrow confines of the sestet in his breathtaking 2006 pamphlet [2005 book], Whereabouts, showed his formal dexterity".

28 October 2007
Mid-October proved to be fruitful for rufus with the launch of Echoes of Shadow by Jeremy Harman with a reception held in the PIMS Common Room at the University, and readings by visiting poets Thomas Joachim Kingston and Michael Lee Rattigan on consecutive Tuesdays at the Art Bar.

Also, a meeting with Claire Keegan (a busy in-between time for her, from a Celtic Studies conference at St. Mike's to the literary festival on the West Coast) reached a definitive agreement to publish Keegan's short story, Night of the Quicken Trees in a single volume. It need not be emphasised that rufus is more than just a little bit thrilled. What a whirlwind month it has been!

15 September 2007
Regrettably, the autumn book launch to have featured readings by Jeremy Harman, Thomas Joachim Kingston, A. F. Moritz, and Michael Lee Rattigan, along with an exhibition of original artwork used in the publications, has been cancelled. Production of Kingston’s and Moritz’s books have been postponed until 2008.

Jeremy Harman’s Echoes of Shadow however, will be launched on October 15, 2007. The event will take place in the common room of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (PIMS) at the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College campus, beginning at 7.00 p.m.

The readings at the Art Bar by UK poets Thomas Joachim Kingston and Michael Lee Rattigan will also go ahead as scheduled, with copies of Rattigan’s translation of the complete collection of Alberto Caeiro available for purchase. See the Events section for complete details.

11 September 2007
Canadian writer, Erin Soros, is the first to brave the waves with rufus books with a unique two-volume collection of short stories. Many ideas abound (with prints or distorted photographs, one with the stories, and the other with quotations complementing the artwork), but it is likely that the collaboration won't be published for a number of years. (More time to buy more hats!) Nevertheless, it is heartening that rufus is finally adding the short story to its list of publications as originally intended.

5 September 2007
NEW RELEASE

Unearthed from the legendary trunk containing Fernando Pessoa’s literary oeuvre, the poems of one of his most celebrated heteronyms, Alberto Caeiro, are now available for the first time in their entirety in a bilingual Portuguese-English edition.

“To exist is enough to be complete.”

At the core of Caeiro’s philosophy is the “shocking reality” that everything in nature is individual and distinct—valuable in and of itself without need for embellishment or comparison—be it a flower, a river, or the setting sun.

Maintained in Michael Lee Rattigan’s careful and alert translations, Caeiro’s distinct philosophy is faithfully rendered and subtly re-worked so that the balance between anticipation and lived reality in the moment is expressed with the greatest tenderness and clarity.

Thomas Crosse, a lesser-known English heteronym of Pessoa’s, was entrusted the task of gathering the poems of Caeiro into one for the English-speaking public. Capturing Caeiro’s unique voice with an immediacy that is true to the original, Rattigan’s sensitive translations have at last succeeded in carrying out Crosse's task.

28 July 2007
Currently in the last phases of design and copy editing, Michael Lee Rattigan’s translation into English of the complete poems of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym Alberto Caeiro is generating ripples of interest. As the first complete collection and only Portuguese-English bilingual edition available to the world en masse, rufus books has neatly stepped into the spotlight with this first dip into translation. With the release date set for 5 September 2007, be ready to dip your own toes – well, fingers – into this highly anticipated publication. What Thomas Crosse, Pessoa’s English heteronym, was instructed to do in compiling the poems of Alberto Caeiro for the English-speaking public, this living and breathing Brit has finally done. Talk about treading in someone else’s footsteps.

13 July 2007
The final ink drawings by Rudolf Kurz have arrived! These have been commissioned for A. F. Moritz’s chapbook entitled Sound of Hungry Animals. These aren’t your usual breed of animals though, so don’t expect any cuddly pets here. Not in the poems, nor certainly in the drawings. Just for a taste, consider the enthralling euphonic-cacophonous copularum of these lines from The Shiver: “…tritons,/ and cod swarms on a black wave/ smothering in their congress/ of mortised and tenoned bodies, and graeae/ lassooing the grampus and narwhal,/ mermen mating with and sating/ mealy tunny”. And yes, there is an extraordinary ink drawing inspired by this poem waiting to send a shiver up your spine – after you’ve felt the first shiver in reading the poem, that is.

15 June 2007
NEW RELEASE

Echoes of Shadow, Jeremy Harman’s debut collection of poems and photographs, is now available for purchase. This is a beautiful limited edition chapbook. “Throughout this deeply accomplished, deeply significant collection, Jeremy Harman offers us a profoundly satisfying conversancy between the movements of nature and those of poetry. Illuminating our losses and holding us, the poems of Echoes of Shadow are poems to hold onto.” John Reibetanz Please see the Echoes of Shadow page for more information.

9 April 2007
rufus books is delighted to announce the addition of John Reibetanz to our author’s listing. It’ll be some light-hearted quizzical poems to look forward to. Quipped as ‘riddlu’, these metaphorical poems are riddles in haiku form, hinting upon anything from wine glasses, a pencil, or a coat hanger. Try your hand at this one:

This hook trails after
its line. It catches no fish,
but pulls the line up.

4 April 2007
The discovery of another complete collection being translated into English of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym, Alberto Caeiro, has spurned rufus books into action. Slated for publication in the spring of 2008, Michael Lee Rattigan’s translation is now being pushed forward to the autumn of 2007 for the simple reason that seven years of honing the manuscript ought to be awarded the chance for it to see first light into English – that is, releasing our translation a goodly ten days before the other one. Also, the rufus books publication will be a Portuguese-English bilingual edition, the only one of its kind.

16 March 2007
A visit to the Toronto Art Expo happily accomplished two things: acquiring the rights to use the transcendental, form-flowing artwork of Andrea Maguire for the cover of Thomas Joachim Kingston’s upcoming publication, Out of Mind; and a chance glance at some startling etchings opening up the possibility to have drawings commissioned for A. F. Moritz’s Sound of Hungry Animals by artist Rudolf Kurz.

6 March 2007
rufus books is pleased to announce the addition of Gill Gregory to our author’s listing. Hailing from London, England, Gregory’s debut poetry collection is intended for publication in the next few years. Perhaps it’s the snow we’re (still) having in Canada, but more likely it’s the poem’s own gentle and soft-white snowiness that lends itself to the mind’s eye and ear:

5 November 2006
Another excellent review of Matthew Francis’s Whereabouts has appeared in PN Review 172, vol. 33, no. 2, November-December issue. David C. Ward describes Francis as "a poetic Houdini, escaping into a locked box in order to liberate his subject self." rufus couldn't agree more.

12 August 2006
An excellent review of Matthew Francis' Whereabouts has appeared in The Guardian. Just for starters: "Matthew Francis already has an impressive pedigree. With this outstanding volume, his place among contemporary British poetry’s aristocracy is confirmed…in this brief, beautiful book…`'

27 July 2006
The first UK review of Matthew Francis' Whereabouts has appeared in The TLS. It's short but to the point: "Part of the pleasure of the book comes from the freshness of the poems' observations, such as a spider's 'dry/posy of legs', the determination in a dead animal's stillness, and dogwood trees each 'adrift in its // vanilla float' to name only a few."

26 May 2006
rufus books is excited to announce the addition of Colin Carberry to our author’s listing – as a translator, in this case. An accomplished poet in his own right, it is planned that Carberry will be publishing an extensive collection of the Mexican poet Jaime Sabines in a bilingual Spanish-English edition.

15 May 2006
West Coast artist Richard Tetrault granted permission for rufus to use a woodcut of a crow for the cover of Michael Lee Rattigan’s collection, Nature Notes. Quite a cocky little crow given the tilt of his head.

3 May 2006
rufus is delighted to add Jeremy Clarke to our listing – twice, actually – first, for a collection of poems entitled Devon Hymns with artwork by John Berger and Yves Berger, and then for an edition entitled Four Seasons of Solitude with artwork by sculptor Emily Young.

9 February 2006
rufus is surprised and humbled to have A. F. Moritz, from Hart House days, now listed with this small press for a publication entitled Sound of Hungry Animals. Expecting this one to be a chapbook in collaboration with an artist (yet to be found).

24 January 2006
Jeremy Harman is finalising a collection of poems and photographs that will be published in the near future. This is where collaboration with the poet/photographer gets to be lots of fun for rufus.

5 November 2005
NEW RELEASE

Whereabouts, Matthew Francis Please see the Whereabouts page for more information.

28 October 2005
Matthew Francis arriving in Toronto!

4 September 2005
rufus is pleased to welcome Thomas Joachim Kingston to its author's listing. With a collection of poems entitled Out of Mind, Kingston's insightful poems are imbued sometimes with an assured certainty, or else with a joyful playfulness, and sometimes with both. "Calculating the Risks" perhaps encapsulates this ambiguity:

CALCULATING THE RISKS

Overnight the stem has split.
I had not seen it coming,
nor with eyes nor hands.

And now I buckle under the weight
of the shiny axe
securely embedded in my head.

Its thereness bewilders but
feels, I think, not out of place.
I should remove it.

But I am learning to balance deftly
under its weight
(I admit the handle impedes my

vision upwards)
but I am comfortable.

In my dreams I hear
the thud-suck of the thick blade’s
severance from my head,
perceive the gaping imperfection
of my head,
the split-gap,
the geyser-pain
there to mock my bereftness.

No, the axe stays.
Let them call me the axeman!

© Thomas Joachim Kingston

24 May 2005
The Canadian Victoria Day holiday presented the opportunity to fly out to Nova Scotia and specifically to Gaspereau Press in Kentville to discuss the printing of Whereabouts and hopefully of many more books to come. It was also a perfect (and legitimate!) excuse to finally visit the East Coast and wave across to Ireland and Great Britain via the resounding Atlantic. A terrific storm picked up overnight on the last day of the short break, pounding and rattling the windows of the B&B to such an extent that sound sleep was out of the question. Instead, wind and horizontal rain beckoned the weary traveller in the wee hours out to Peggy’s Cove and the famed lighthouse to take in the full fury of wave and spray. Not another soul around. Glorious!

25 November 2004
Hanlyn Davies – lithograph, permission.

23 June 2004
Is this really where it all begins in earnest? Rhetorical question.
Matthew Francis – pop-up poems – permission…granted.

In the beginning…
There was Hart House, with its wood-panelled library and deep-hued leather couches and even deeper rufus-red carpeting, and its myriad literary happenings. Then sometime later a year in London, travelling around Great Britain between studies, an epiphanic hike along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path in Wales, a somewhat bedraggled return to Toronto, a tripping over the tail and unexpected dip into Matthew Francis’s Dragons and “The God of Paths” therein, and then the daft idea of starting a small press in earnest. Followed by a return visit to London and a skip over to Ireland and Sligo in particular for a reading by Seamus Heaney. Back to Toronto expectant and purposeful. And rufus tucked close.