JERRY BURNS AND GOLIARDS PRESS

2/24/2015

Photo by Roger Steffens/The Family Acid

Poet Jerry Burns, editor, publisher, and printer of The Goliards Literary littlemag and Goliards Press. Here he is shown running his Multi, printing "My Favorite Poets," a collection edited by Roger Steffens and published by Goliards Press in 1969. Goliards Press was in operation from 1964 to 1979. The press was based out of Fairhaven, near Bellingham, Washington.

Roger Steffens is a writer, poet, actor, and is known widely for his work as an archivist of reggae music. He is also a prolific photographer, and starting from his service in the Vietnam war, he documented many decades of his life through thousands of beautiful photographs. The above photo of Jerry Burns and his press was taken from The Family Acid feed, an amazing collection of Roger Steffens's photo work curated by Kate Steffens. In addition to its online presence, selected photos from the The Family Acid collection have been published as a book of photographs by the same name.

I'm grateful that Roger Steffens documented the behind the scenes production of his book, and that the above photo was included in The Family Acid feed, as it provided the inspiration to track down my own copy of "My Favorite Poets" and look into the work of Jerry Burns. Pictured below is the copy of the book that I recently acquired. I wonder if the same book is among those stacked on the table behind Jerry Burns 46 years ago?

Paul Hansen link

7/2/2016 04:12:39 pm

Dear Subton,

Jerry and the press were my neighbors during the early seventies in an old bank building in Fairhaven. That is a lovely photograph. I recently came across in my files a chapbook Jerry printed in '72 by Pamela Henrioulle called Gin in the Afternoon. Do you know if the Goliards Press still has an existence?

Thank you,

Paul Hansen
La Conner, WA

Eric Bagdonas

7/8/2016 05:31:50 pm

Paul,

Thanks for the comment!

No, I’m not aware of an active presence for Goliards Press, but then again, my knowledge of their work is very limited. I only became aware of the press after discovering Kate Steffens’ photo feed which featured the photo, above, of Jerry running his press. So far the only Goliards Press piece that I’ve personally encountered has been My Favorite Poets.

There’s one other photo that I saw somewhere (likely the Family Acid instagram feed) that showed the outside of the Fairhaven shop. I’ll have to try to find it again to see if I can see your building! Beyond lists of published works of Goliards Press, I have not been able to find much information online about the press. Did Goliards function as a printing job shop, or just a publisher?

Thanks,
Eric

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