I Heard It Through the Grapevine

Asa Benveniste (1925-1990) who founded the legendary Trigram Press in London, 1965, ostensibly to publish Anglo-American cutting edge poetry influenced by Black Mountain poets, the New York School of Poets and the European avant-garde, was not only a self-taught, one-off maverick genius as a printer, typographer and book-designer, but also a superbly innovative language poet, whose own poetry tended to be obscured by his merits as a publisher. Throughout its duration, 1965-1978, the Trigram list epitomised ultimate hipster cool, as a leading independent, with Benveniste's unparalleled book design extending to poets like Piero Heliczer, Jim Dine, Tom Raworth, Nathaniel Tarn, B.S. Johnson, J.H. Prynne, Barry MacSweeney and Louis Zukofsky. Jeremy Reed's deeply personal tribute to Asa Benveniste as his enduring poetic avatar, and the encourager and publisher of his early poetry informs a book that is both an appraising memoir and a significant evaluation of Trigram Press. The book also includes a reprint of Benveniste's collection Edge (1975), as well as miscellaneous writings of his retrieved from small press publication.