new books
Utopia
We invited people to imagine beyond their present state,
to conjure a society in which they’d like to live.
Here’s a sudden freedom to release what’s possible, regardless
of everything, in a tempestuous forward movement.
We live in a state of ranting and fear. We only have time for
opposition. Utopia isn’t opposition, it’s radical dreaming
24pp, 200 x 200mm, handsewn, cover with french flaps. Edition of 101, June 2024
€15
Out on a Limb
what does it mean
when you try to grow mint and fail?
what are the basic conditions
for cultivating an invasive plant?
if you fail to meet them
who are you?
The twelfth in the coloured book series by Judy Kravis, an episodic, poetic continuum of
observations, questions and dreams.
48pp, perfect bound, 105 x148mm,pbk, numbered edition of 301, June 2024
€7
Counting Backwards From One Hundred
Counting backwards from one hundred when you can't sleep revives an autobiography of numbers: street numbers, opus numbers, peg numbers, birthdays, buses, ages, dates, years, movies, books, songs, long division, multiplication, punctuation, superstition, one or two introverted numbers, numbers best ignored.
24pp, 200 x 200 mm, handsewn and bound, cover with french flaps, Edition of 101, September 2023
€15
Livre à la dérive / Book adrift / Catalogue Déraisonné
Judy Kravis
A reflection on How and Why I Make Books, the writer’s relationship with the land, plus a statement on the nature of the artist’s book and a list of all JK’s books. The fourth in the 8 x 8 x 8 series.
8pp, 200 x 200mm, handsewn, Edition of 57, A boreen book, April 2022
€7
How to talk to the inspector
What is a stakeholder?
What is a trustee?
Why are you nervous?
Why are we angry?
Confronted with the prospect of 85,000 square metres of solar panels on top of the hill where she lives, a poet/gardener learns how to face off an inspector, a fat boy and a gombeen man in language they can parse, while trying to find her feet, her hands and her words on the land she has tended for many years.
48pp, perfect bound, 105x148mm, pbk, numbered edition of 301. A boreen book, May 2021
€7
I am the messenger
I am the messenger and I am angry. I know the science and I am afraid. Things are falling apart, but that is exactly the time when change is possible. Greta Thunberg has been speaking loud and clear. But is anyone listening? The future is now, or, there is no future.
A compilation of images and texts from 25 contributors.
60pp, 160 x 210mm, thread-sewn, colour pictures throughout. Edition of 50 hbk and 101 pbk. April 2021
Hardback €25
Paperback €15
The Orpheus Fugue
A fugue is an escape that finds itself, with joy or relief or fear, in the place where it started. The Orpheus Fugue is a swift divergent run through operas by Monteverdi & Gluck, plus Jean Cocteau’s Orphée and a coffee bar in Maldon, Essex. The third in the 8 x 8 x 8 series.
8pp, 200 x 200mm, handsewn, Edition of 57, A boreen book, February 2021
€7
Fifty States
Fifty states of mind across a divided America. Published to coincide with the 2020 American presidential election, the book consists of three double page spreads scattered with red and blue words: OUTRAGE, FURY, DISBELIEF, FEAR, LOATHING etc. This book will make you laugh or cry.
Priced to reflect the capitalist dream: 1 — 14, €10, 15 — 30, €20, 31 - 50 €30 Profits will fund a future publication about the environmental catastrophe.
8pp, 200 x 200mm, hand - sewn, Edition of 50 signed and numbered.
3rd November 2020
€20
57 moments
57 moments in Alentejo, Portugal. The tourist map has no street names, no legend, no key, only numbers in basic printer’s colours. We’re happy with that. We’ll make it up as we go along. We enjoy the translations in tourist brochures and the roads that may not exist, the random numbers, the reservoir picnics, the convents, real and invented. We’re set on slow light drift & observation without judgement. History hangs by a thread. We look out northwest until a great lake comes into view.
34pp, 185 x 130mm, 28 short texts, 14 images, 2 endpapers of brochure patois. A numbered edition of 57, top-sewn by Albert Browne in Cork, September 2019.
€10
These Women
These women slip into a space you didn’t know was there, they see shadows where there isn’t even light. Thirty-four swift texts scan the insights and generosity of everyday encounters—in shops, around the home patch, along the road, in town.
48pp, perfect bound, 105x148mm, pbk, numbered edition of 301. A boreen book, October 2018
€7
Loose Buttons
Photographs of disparate objects, both local and exotic, unexpected scenes, familiar items newly juxtaposed, these loose buttons are grounded, clarified—humorous, anecdotal and dreamy—evoked in short texts beneath each picture. With a puff of smoke we could all be walking on air.
28pp, laser printed photographs with text, 190 x 235, stapled, edition of 39. A byways production, November 2018
€10
The Nine O'Clock Movie
A zombie falls in love with a woman after eating her boyfriend's brain and starts to regain human feelings.
Nine o'clock is the watershed
After that you're on your own
8pp, 200 x 200mm, handsewn, Edition of 57, A boreen book, September 2017
€7
What Happens When Nothing Else Does
One Saturday morning in a fresh young pause in the Wolf Café this phrase began to occupy the back of my brain. An eight-page fugue around what happened next.
8pp, 200 x 200mm, handsewn, Edition of 57, A boreen book, September 2017
€7
One Day Closer To Dying
I was travelling in Myanmar, visiting the Shwedagon Pagoda at sunset, which seemed like the perfect moment ...
32pp, 170 x 200mm, bound with brass screws, A byways production, September 2017. Also available: Special large format edition of 10, signed and numbered, in presentation folder, 320 x 400mm, €375.
€10
Everything is Here
We were travelling in the Alpujarras in Southern Spain, and read about a Tibetan monastery, which, as the guide books said, would give us the impression of having fallen through a black hole into South-East Asia.
32pp, 220 x 200mm, bound with brass screws. A byways production, September 2017.
€10
On Being an Artist: or, Another Oak Tree
I bought Michael Craig-Martin's book On Being an Artist and read it from cover to cover. I enjoyed its jargon-free clarity, sprinkled with humour. As soon as I finished reading it I had an urge to cut out an oak tree through the covers and all the pages. Inside the presentation box is a text derived from the book's uniformly positive reviews, printed in red.
Hardback edition of On Being an Artist by Michael Craig-Martin's book with oak tree cut out. 304pp, 160 x 235mm. In presentation box with enclosed text. Edition of One. A roadwork, November, 2016.