THE ROPE-MAKERS

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Limited edition. Letterpress printed and hand-bound at The Stonehouse Fine Press on 125 gsm Canaletto paper. Frontispiece reproduction of a nude charcoal study by Sarah Longley tipped in adjacent to the title page.Original plain card wraps with a colour marbled paper dustwrapper, lettered in black to a paper label affixed to the front panel. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. In the fine dustwrapper. A lovely copy.

Issued in a limited edition of 175 copies, this example is numbered 46 and signed by Michael Longley in black ink to the limitation page at the rear. A lovely anthology of fifty-six of Longley's love poems, chosen by the author, with a frontispiece of a nude study by Sarah Longley. The poems are drawn from eight collections published between 1969 and 2004, with two new poems added for good measure. "I have believed for a long time that love poetry is at the core of the enterprise", Longley writes in his short prefatory note, "if poetry is a wheel, then the hub of the wheel is love poetry. Poems that articulate all the other cares and attachments – children, tamily, friends, heroes, the dead, country, countryside, animals, art – radiate from the hub like spokes in a wheel."