The Pandemic and the Poem In Conversation With Limberlost Press BY HEATHER HAMILTON-POST
“It’s been satisfying to edit and bring together different voices–I’ve taken satisfaction in the act of putting together an anthology. It’s really an artistic creation, especially with fewer and fewer print journals,” explains Rick Ardinger. With his wife Rosemary, Ardinger owns and operates Limberlost Press. They also publish The Limberlost Review. “Maybe it’s my old school nature, he says. “But I do know that a lot of writers like to have a hard copy in their hands, on their coffee tables, on their bed stands, so I always knew I wanted to bring out a hardcopy.” Ardinger explains that the Review, in its first iteration, appeared in the 1970s in Massachusetts. When the couple moved to Idaho for graduate school, he had a seasoned journalism professor who insisted his students learn how to set type on a letterpress, even as the press was a fast fading art and long before text-consumed smartphones. “And then, ten years later,” Ardinger explains, “we winched an old letterpress into the garageturned-studio, and began letterpressing books.” In the 1980s, the Ardingers pivoted to beautiful letterpress printed and hand-sewn
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books of poetry and prose by individual authors. Rick Ardinger served as the director of the Idaho Humanities Council from 1991 until 2018, so printing books happened during strange hours.
“It’s very tactile, and when I was working, I needed an outlet, a way to work with my hands. It’s always great to sew up the first copy of a new collection of poems,” he says. Once he retired, he again turned to the idea of a literary journal, which has appeared annually since 2019. The 2021 edition is scheduled for February.
The annual, which Ardinger calls an “occasional journal,” is approximately 375 pages, and features work largely from Western writers, both known and unknown. The book is comprised of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, book reviews, writers reflecting on old favorites, interviews, and even artwork. Each piece is thoughtfully selected and placed within the whole, which brings together a variety of voices to tell a unique–and uniquely western– story.
Rick Ardinger and his wife Rosemary own and operate Limberlost Press
www.idahomemagazine.com
Limberlost Press and Limberlost Review both exist, in many ways, to bring people together. “When the shutdown hit, I was encouraging people, if they liked someone’s work, to tell them. What writer doesn’t like to hear from people who read their work and like it? There was a lot of interaction. One of the
