Gary Metras, poet and publisher of Adastra Press

Gary Metras, the Poet Laureate of Easthampton, Massachusetts in 2018, has published 118 chapbooks, broadsides, and full length books since the founding of Adastra Press in 1979.

Adastra Press, the oldest independent poetry publisher in the Pioneer Valley, is a one-person printing and publishing operation, specializing in limited editions of poetry, mostly in chapbook size, letterpress printed using hand set type, with a paper cover that has a flat spine glued to the hand sewn signature pages. In 2020, after more than 40 years of operation, Gary decided to stop publishing and printing new books to "enjoy life more," by spending more time and traveling with his family, fly fishing in the region's rivers, while continuing to write his own poetry.

Gary learned to print through a night course at Smith Vocational High School, concentrating on letterpress, but he also had to complete all phases of the course, including computer typesetting, camera, stripping and plate making, and offset printing. The Adastra print shop is a separate room designed within his garage. Gary has about 72 drawers of type and two presses: a Golding Pearl and a Chandler & Price; both have foot treadles, but the C & P has been adapted to an electric motor. He frequently buys new type from fellow Northampton Book Fair exhibitor Ed Rayher of Swamp Press and Letter Foundry of Northfield, MA. Adastra Press books have been bound as cloth editions by local binders, including Bill Streeter, Dea Sasso and David Barbeau.

"Being a poet before I became a printer, my main concern in printing is to do justice to the word on the page. "I suppose I became attracted to letterpress in the aftermath of my first few chapbooks that were publish typewriter/mimeograph with stapled bindings. They were good to have at the time, but I also knew there were better ways to present the word on the page. In libraries I explored older books with fine type and leather bindings. In some book stores I found letterpress chapbooks that I used as a model to design my own first efforts, then slowly built up my own distinctive way of putting words on paper. People tell me they can spot an Adastra Press title on book store shelves from several feet away. That pleases me," Gary says.

Most of the poets I’ve published tell me they receive more favorable comments on the way their Adastra Press books look and feel rather than on their own poems. I tell them it is because most of us have not seen such quality printing, that most people’s exposure to books is in school texts or mass market paperbacks, neither of which have much aesthetic appeal nor do they honor to the word," Metras says.

Letterpress and poetry were not his livelihood. Gary was an English teacher at Hampshire Regional High School in Westhampton, MA for 31 years, retiring after the 2003 school year. Among the many limited edition poetry books that Gary has published, he said several stand out as favorites: Millrat by Michael Casey (1989) and Pecked to Death by Swans by Thomas Lux (1993). Here's the opening stanza:

"Your tear-wracked family bedside: elderly grandchildren,

great-grandchildren arriving

straight from med school; not a peep of pain, calm,

lucid, last words impeccably drafted?

No. Pecked to death by swans."

Both Pecked to Death by Swans and Millrat letter press editions are out of print but may be available from rare booksellers. Be sure to stop by and see Gary's display of Adastra Press books at the Northampton Book Fair on November 22nd and 23rd at the Northampton Community Arts Trust, 33 Hawley Street.