Some books you wait half a lifetime for. They arrive almost complete as if they had always existed, and all you can do is realise them… . Randall Couch’s Peal is one of them, as were, in their time, Kurt Schwitters’ I Build My Time, 2001 and Cralan Kelder’s Lemon Red, 2005. That is what emanates from Randall Couch’s book, its timelessness. It is almost a medieval book, but one that could only be achieved in the digital age.
Coracle books remain almost clandestine, shelved in our barn in rural Tipperary. They circulate via the occasional book fair, general travel and demonstration, the intermittent website listing, but mostly they see the light through prepared lists for particular libraries. An edition of three hundred copies, as is this one and is often the case for a book of poems, will last about three years. After that, we will struggle to find a copy amongst the boxes of new books, but I have a feeling that Peal will always be with us in its completeness. —Simon Cutts, Publisher, Coracle Press
As an artistic book-object, Peal is well-nigh perfectly conceived. Just as you would expect from Coracle, it is beautifully designed, if a little austere. Ian Hamilton Finlay said towards the end of his life that ‘art is a small adjustment,’ and very many small adjustments went into what Coracle describes as ‘perhaps one of the most elaborate of [their] productions.’ Every single parameter and detail of this bright and clangorous book interrelates satisfyingly when examined, like snugly interlocking tesserae.—David Briers, Art Monthly (London)
