the haiku circle

Ed Rayher: Printer & Workshop Leader . . .

Ed Rayher is a poet and printer living in Northfield, MA. He runs Swamp Press which publishes limited edition letterpress books of poetry. The press was founded in 1976 and its books have won various awards, including
 two NEA grants, a CCLM grant, and Grand Prize in a juried Gallery Show at Cooperstown, NY. Swamp Press books are in the Rare Book collections of the Boston Public Library, New York Public Library, Brown, Harvard, Smith College, SUNY, & McGill. Over the years the press has published over seventy titles, many in both paper editions and deluxe limited editions.

Current honors include inclusion in Private Typecasters by the renowned Bird & Bull Press (2008), and The Vandercook Book published
by Roni Gross and Barbara Henry, 2009, which is on tour throughout the US.
 Swamp Press publications include Anchors of Light by Alice Fulton, Lynching Poems by Chuck Zerby, Being There by Tom Clausen, Bird Song More and More by LA Davidson, and Scriptures of Venus by Robert Bensen. Currently the press is working on a collection of prose poems by Gian Lombardo of Conway, MA. The press also prints books for others and includes a hot metal type foundry.

Ed Rayher, Letterpress Workshop 2010. Photo by Trish Crapo

Ed’s formal education includes a Ph.D. in Philosophy from UMass Amherst, with a focus on nineteenth century evolutionary theory & the work of Alfred Russell Wallace. Ed also earned a MFA in Poetry at UMass Amherst, working with James Tate and Madeleine DeFrees, and has published in The Antigonish Review, Colorado Quarterly, Washout Review, and 4 Zoas, among other places.

He currently participates in a long-lived local writing workshop of peers in the Valley, as well as in Slate Roof Press, a local poetry publishing group. Ed was named the winner of The 2011 Poet's Seat Contest in Greenfield, MA. As poet, his recent publications include the chapbook All We Can Do Is Wait, and 2012 Hedgerow Poetry Book Contest winner The Paleontologist’s Red Pumps, to be released in the fall of 2013.

Since the Haiku Circle's inception, Ed, in partnership with Greg Joly of Bull Thistle Press, has been leading the very popular Letterpress Workshop. Each year Ed & Greg's workshop has the participants, press, bind and walk away with a beautifully printed project of their own writing.

Ed Rayher of Swamp Press, and Greg Joly of Bull Thistle Press. Photo by Bill Deegan

Greg Joly, Letterpress Workshop 2010. Photo by Trish Crapo.