Vagabond Press published my chapbook Morgenland in 2007 in a limited edition of 100 copies.

In 2005 I travelled to Seoul for a four-month Asialink residency with support from the University of Melbourne, the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australia-Korea Foundation. My time there was spent teaching at Sogang University, and working on my own projects. I wrote a large number of poems and prose poems during the residency and did most of my writing in Korean internet cafes (or PC Bangs), entering my posts straight into a weblog.

By the time I returned to Australia in 2006, I had two finished manuscripts: Imaginary Cities: PC Bangs and another chapbook, Morgenland, incorporating poems written in Korea and Japan. This second volume was conceptually related to Abendland (2006), in that it was concerned with ‘morning-land’, a word sometimes used to refer to ‘the East’.

At the time I intended to publish Morgenland in a similar manner as that of its counterpart but after meeting Vagabond Press editor Michael Brennan in Paris in 2006, I sent him the manuscript for consideration. Morgenland came out through Vagabond Press in late 2007 in a limited edition of one-hundred copies, right after the release of my debut poetry collection, We Will Disappear (2007).

In terms of layout and production Morgenland, while Abendland’s twin, displays a more refined and professional sense of itself as an object. It also bears several hallmarks of what we might call ‘proper poetry publishing’ while at the same time spurning standard international systems of identification such as a barcode or ISBN.

The cover is a thick, textured cardboard, and features a hand-affixed digital image by artist Kay Orchison. The author’s name, as with We Will Disappear, sits above the title, which is capitalised. The publisher’s name and the place of publication appear at the bottom of the front cover, as with all previous titles in the Rare Objects series. The back cover features the publisher’s address at the bottom.

On the inside front cover is a list of acknowledgements, the Asialink logo, a dedication, the publisher’s name again and the Rare Object number (#50). At the very bottom is the author’s copyright statement and a link to my website. All aspects of the book’s design were handled by Vagabond Press, in accordance with the style used for previous books in their Rare Objects series.

While the launch and publication of We Will Disappear in August 2007 was almost totally public, the ‘publication’ of Morgenland was essentially private: I met Michael Brennan once more, this time in a Sydney pub in November 2007, to sign and number all one-hundred books. Thus, having duly ‘authorised’ Morgenland, I received my ten free copies.

This ritual was obscure and fascinating in itself; every tenth copy was kept by Vagabond as part of its archives for the Rare Objects series. I also bought an extra twenty copies at a discount rate and was allowed to keep one extra unsigned and un-numbered ‘reading’ copy.

In the absence of an official launch, one can only say that as a performance, Morgenland is a chapbook that seems to want to be valued; it retains aspects of both digital culture in its assembly and delivery and prior traditions of the chapbook or ‘garland’ in its size, length and modesty. It is more aesthetically pleasing than any chapbook I have made myself, before or since.

Morgenland received one review, by Philly poet Adam Fieled, in 2009. It has been archived by the National Library of Australia and the State Library of New South Wales.

An earlier version of ‘Alone In An Airport II’ appeared in this chapbook’s companion volume Abendland (2006). ‘Hoju Bihang-gi’ first appeared online in Peril. ‘Back to the Tourist III’ first appeared online in Softblow.

Thanks to Nikki Anderson, Michael Brennan, Keiji Minato, An Sonjae, Sang Kee Park, Joseph, Tan, Larissa Hjorth, Alexie Glass, Moon Sun Choi, Joo Young Lee, Kathleen Asjes, Anouk Hoare, Andrew Cook, Sean Heaney, Hiroshi Sasaki, Steve Riddell, Kevin Puloski, Young Eun Pae and Bridget O’Brien. 

An earlier version of this text was originally published as part of my PhD thesis, “Bonfire of the Vanity Presses: Self-Publishing in the Field of Australian Poetry” (Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, 2010).