Amy Borkwood lives and makes books in Waterloo. She has been published in the Malahat Review and Fiddlehead, and works as a fiction editor with The New Quarterly. She is a founding member of Stitch n' Kitsch, a Waterloo-based arts collective which runs a quarterly show and sale of member's work. She co-edits the Waterloo-based zine Scared of My Mate, as well as editing her own miniature zine, Heirloom. She taught herself to bind in 2004 and has recently started a small press which will involve local writers and limited runs of handmade books, as well as running her own bookmaking business, Nightjar Books.

MONDO: As a cum laude resident bookmaker and zine editor of the Waterloo region, what impact has your involvement in the production and publishing of literary ephemera had on the community, and what kinds of feedback have you received?

AB: The arts community in Waterloo, at least the DIY arts community, is small enough that it seems possible to make an impact, to be able to make things happen. In contrast with a city like Toronto, Waterloo only has a few currently running zines, so if you put out a zine, good chance is someone who is interested in the DIY community will pick up a copy. The best response I've had regarding Heirloom is that having a venue to submit writing to has made someone start working harder at their writing, or start taking their work more seriously. Bookmaking, though, seems too specific of a craft to impact the community outside of a very specific group of people. I'm part of an arts/crafts collective in Waterloo called Stitch 'n' Kitsch — I think as a group we've impacted the arts community and greater community in Waterloo, but I don't think individually I'd have done as much. But as a group, we actively get our art into the community by holding shows and sales, and supporting each other as we try to grow as craftspeople. I think for anyone working in a specific craft, having a collective of like-minded people really makes a difference, makes it possible to do something bigger in the greater community, as well as to feel part of a community.

MONDO: The DIY aesthetic seems rooted in transforming "leftover" scraps produced by our culture into something beauteous and digestible. That which is forsaken and relegated to the trash heap is given new life. What do you think is the appeal is of such an effect? Is this the "heirloom" we have inherited from past generations, to reuse old things in spite of the knee-jerk reaction to throw stuff away when it has outlived its usefulness or our attention?

AB: I think the entire appeal is in the context &mash; in taking something out of its original context and making it new again. In taking an old encyclopaedia and making it into a journal — the person who uses it gets to see something old, used, un-useful, etc. in a context which makes it regain our attention. At shows, people are most interested in my found notebooks — I cut up trash-heap books and bind reclaimed papers alongside plain recycled sheets. The fact that these old pages are given a new context makes them interesting, new, and of worth. With the zine — Heirloom — images are found almost exclusively in old books, found postcards or papers, and given a new context alongside text. In that way, materials considered unimportant are given new life as art, framing stories, poems, words.

MONDO: Do you think this movement will lose or has lost any steam? Is the "economic minimalism" a conscious aspect of the objects you create? I would say that the satisfaction of a cheap means of production trumps big budget ventures, but at what point does finance and creativity reach a limit in your particular areas of interest?

AB: The DIY movement is so important within other communities — arts, music, environmentalism, anti-consumerism, and more. It might be the fact that I am surrounded by people who are heavily involved in DIY, but I see the movement only becoming more important and useful as we become more conscious of the need to reuse, reclaim, and reduce our obsession with "new" items. Economically — lack of money only forces a craftsperson/artist to be more creative. To not have any money means relying on innovation to find/reclaim/reuse items to make something of worth. But if we're talking about zines — there are some basic costs — for example, photocopying each issue Ð that becomes impossible without a certain amount of funds backing a project. But, honestly, it's just about each person's dedication and priorities. I need to make Heirloom, so I put aside the money in order to get the zine printed.

MONDO: Along the same lines, we tend to take paper for granted, and your literary projects tend to treat paper as precious, something in need of being saved and re-appropriated. Has your relationship with these flat pieces of writing surface changed since you first started bookbinding and zine-making?

AB: Most definitely. I've always loved paper, but since starting to work with paper my love has become all-encompassing. I started making paper in my late teens, which made me appreciate paper much more — the amount of work that goes into making handmade papers is huge, though hugely enjoyable. But bookmaking made me seek out specific paper, find beautiful cover papers (I use paper from The Paper Place on Queen in Toronto almost exclusively) and reclaim paper from old books. My favourite thing is to rummage for old books and find pages that I can use in bindings, which allows paper that would be thrown away or recycled to be appreciated, written or drawn on, and used in a new way, different than its original intention. In zine-making especially, a page from an old book can be framed in such a way that it becomes important and new, and this is then photocopied, distributed, etc — it then becomes part of a publication, given a new context.

MONDO: Notable about your layouts in Heirloom is that the text is very much enhanced by its framed image; it seems very much alive, breathed new life vis-ˆ-vis visual sumptuousness. Is there a thoughtful reciprocation between layout and words when you choose certain backgrounds? There is a subtle difference between your layouts in Heirloom and other local zines; how would you pinpoint this contrast?

AB: I always have a particular theme for images which is separate from the text. In local zines such as CTRPLLR or Scared of My Mate (which I co-edit with four other women) the images for each page are decided based on the words on that page. A story about a train will include train images, for example. Instead, I have an idea for what the zine will look like image wise, and then the text works outside of that. I wanted issue two to have a dangerous hand-drawn animals vs. William Morris textiles/wallpapers theme, and sometimes there were correlations or contrasts between the images and the text, but usually the image and the text are separate in Heirloom.

MONDO: In the second issue of Heirloom you imposed a fifty five-word constraint on submissions. Why this particular number and what did you think of the outcome?

A: I came upon some 55 word stories online, or in magazines, and really liked the idea of the restraint, of only having 55 words to tell an entire story. I really like formal poetry, and I saw this as a sort of formal prose. Also, due to the physical size of the zine (1/4 page), I thought it would be a good way of getting more stories to physically fit in the zine. As for the outcome — I was completely astounded by the stories I was given. I told some very talented friends about the idea and quickly started receiving stories. I was amazed by the quality of the stories, by their overall succinctness, and most especially I noticed that because attention was paid to every word used, the final story became almost like poetry in terms of word choice and detail.

MONDO: Name some of your favourite finds in your search for old books and magazines.

AB: I consistently found amazing materials and books at the Recycling Depot, which was almost like a free book exchange operating out of huge blue boxes in uptown Waterloo. It was the context — the ability to go in the middle of the night to this tiny fenced-in area crammed with books and search for hours. I found antique books, old postcards with almost illegible hand-written notes, children's books with old drawings, gorgeous nature encyclopaedias. Reader's Digests, which I use for the book-board, were a consistent though amazing find: it seems everyone is tossing their old Reader's Digests. Most amazing was finding old Reader's Digests from the mid-60's and 70's, when they were covered in beautiful wall-paper-like book-cloths and papers.

MONDO: If the lovingly crafted books you've made could speak, what would they say?

AB: They'd say that people should care more about paper! And them! And that people should stop buying mass-produced books made by machines!

Links:
www.nightjarbooks.etsy.com
www.stitchnkitsch.com