He was fortunate in finding Albion Press at Newstead in Brisbane as printers for Phoenix Publications. The owner and manager of Albion Press, John Gresham and his wife Jan, share Jurgensen’s concern for books whose design complements the writers’ work and exercises the best typographic and printing possibilities permitted by the budget. Phoenix Publications is a labour of love, as are many small publishing houses, and all the profit from one book goes into the production of the next. One book must pay for another: a principle that exercises the publisher’s judgement to the utmost when tied to a principle of equal priority that each book must also justify itself by the quality of literature and design.

Adrian Wilson, the San Francisco designer, in his concise and beautifully presented manual, The Design of Books, explains the complex factors that contribute to the production of a good book. Book design, Wilson says, is necessary for one reason: ‘to bring to the purchaser a book of the best possible quality for the price he is willing to pay’. Wilson’s test of a well-designed book is the one that Phoenix Publications applies to the selection of writing for publication: vitality. His criterion for a successful book is also shared by Jurgensen and Phoenix:

imaginative appropriateness – that sense of delightful surprise which draws a reader to a book and sends him out to the store or library with it under his arm, which gives the book club or mail-order subscriber a glow of satisfaction and an irresistible desire to read. With the book in hand he should find that the typography communicates, the illustrations illuminate, and the binding enhances and preserves the creator’s thought.

Phoenix Press is fortunate in having artists and designers like Christopher McVinish and Cynthia Breusch who have contributed the artwork for most of its publications. Following Ethnic Australia, which was designed by Chris McVinish, Phoenix published Peter Skrzynecki’s collection of migrant poems under the title The Polish Immigrant, with a cover design by Charles Blackman.

Skrzynecki, Polish Ukrainian by birth, emigrated to Australia in 1949 at the age of four, and this collection of poems, written between 1972 and 1982, has attracted very favourable comment. Skrzynecki has in turn assisted other migrant writers to find a hearing. Following the precedent set by Ethnic Australia, he edited Joseph’s Coat, an anthology published this year by Hale and Iremonger.

The third Phoenix publications was another winner. Serge Liberman’s collection of short stories, Universe of Clowns, received the New South Wales Premier’s Award for 1983 in the category of multicultural writing. Liberman’s compassionate and wryly amusing stories were simply and deftly complemented by the design and illustration of Christopher McVinish and Cynthia Breusch.

In 1983 Phoenix also published a controversial and beautifully-designed book, a sequence of poems, written by Jurgensen himself as a tour de force composed over the space of seven days. The Skin Trade, the fifth collection in English by Jurgensen who also publishes poetry and prose in German. The poems are a powerful outburst which articulates with controlled clarity the vehement response that most people make, and most people conceal, when a passionate relationship comes to an end. The Skin Trade, the poems and the book, is therefore one complete artifact, a work offered as a universal emblem to represent the experience of its readers, as much as that of the poet, as they try to reconcile the spirit and the flesh in human love. The cover represents Bernini’s St Theresa in Ecstasy, a sculpture which is itself an emblem of the indissoluble relationship between spiritual and fleshly ecstasy. The Skin Trade is not facile poetry, but has pleased perceptive readers. It was a bold publication which may have drawn misdirected comments about self-publication, but the poetry and the book comprise one intricate statement made by a poet who happens to be a publisher.

Although Phoenix Publications was established to present the work of migrant and minority-group writers in publications of good quality, the policy was extended by 1984 to include the work of Australian-born writers. The playwright Jack Hibberd brought out a collection of sixteen short plays with Phoenix under the title of Squibs. The collection is very reasonably priced and is ideal for secondary and tertiary drama courses, with an introduction by D.J. O’Hearn and a commentary by Lois Ellis. Squibs epitomises Hibberd’s pungent style, wide interests and searching criticism presented through intensely theatrical situations. Again this is a well-designed Phoenix publication, illustrated by scenes from productions and with a cover design by Christopher McVinish.

The second Phoenix publication in 1984 was Lolo Houbein’s Everything is Real, a collection of short stories, many of which won awards on their first publication. Lolo Houbein was born in the Netherlands and came to Australia as a young woman in 1985. Her writing has the vitality that Phoenix rates highly and the stories point up experience with the particular insight of a female participant rather than an observer. Cynthia Breusch’s sensitive, impressionistic cover design, produced with oil-based pens, complements Houbein’s style perfectly.

Projected Phoenix publications include a history of multicultural writing in Australia written by Sneja Gunew, a Vietnamese novel, and a futuristic novel about a member of a lost Aboriginal tribe. Between the projected and the possible lies the policy of financial dependence on the last publication and rigorous adherence to the principle of no skimping on quality of text and book production. The Press also plans a Phoenix Poets series, and Jurgensen hopes to inaugurate these with work by the Turkish poet, Nihat Ziyalan, who made a first Australian appearance in the June 1984 issue of Outrider.

Outrider, a twice-yearly journal for writers born in and outside Australia, was a direct outcome of the success of Ethnic Australia. Jurgensen believed that rather than produce a series of anthologies, he would better serve the interests of Australian writers by publishing a lively, elegantly-designed and high-quality literary and review journal. He hoped that Outrider would be something of a focus, if not for multicultural writing, at least for much of the commentary and discussion surrounding it. Jurgensen is very doubtful about the absolute value of discriminating between multicultural and Anglo-Celtic Australian literature, but feels that the designation may serve a useful interim purpose if it encourages foreign-born and minority-group writers to achieve high standards and discerning readership. The worst fate of minority-group literature is that it should be received as a curiosity and given a kind of compassionate dispensation by readers who consciously relax the standards of their expectations. Phoenix Publications was established precisely to counteract any tendency of this kind on the part of writers and readers.

Outrider, a journal which might also be seen as a six-monthly anthology, was actually handed to Jurgensen as an assignment, as it were, by the Multicultural Writers’ Conference held in Sydney in 1983; Jurgensen chose the name from the title-poem of Randolph Stow’s collection published in London in 1962. The name not only denotes someone who rides ahead to survey future prospects, but denotes the reverse of the ‘outsider’ role often bestowed on migrants. The Outrider is the scout sent on ahead by the group to observe and report back the lie of the land. Probably this is the role of all writers, whatever their country of birth and in whatever country they eventually write.

Following the policy of Phoenix Publications, Outrider prints poems in the original language and represents both Australian-born and foreign-born writers. Its artwork is of a very high standard; it is selected carefully to complement the literary content and is itself complemented by the writing. Graphic artists represented in the first four issues include Silvana Gardner, Jurgis Janavicius, Joseph A. Klimok, Leonas Urbanas, and Mark Winters. Each issue of Outrider presents a variety of writing, but also has a centre of interest. The issue for December 1985, for example, focuses on the work of David Malouf and Dimitris Tsaloumas.

Outrider receives a subsidy from the Literature Board, and as with many journals, those involved also provide financial backing. Phoenix Publications has not relied excessively on Literature Board grants, having received subsidy to date for three of its titles. The effort to break even over several titles includes efficient distribution for its authors through Kingfisher, Tower Books, Mannings Library Supplies, and James Bennett. Orders may also be placed with Phoenix Publications, PO Box 210, Indooroopilly, Queensland, 4068.

Birds, especially those whose names alliterate with ‘Press’, are highflyers in the world of publishing – Penguin, Pelican, Puffin, Peregrine, Peacock, to name only some – and Brisbane has become the habitat of another distinguished bird. Jurgensen hopes that Phoenix will not be a rara avis, an exotic visitor, but that it will remain part of Australian publishing. To quote Adrian Wilson. we cannot have too much of books that ‘have been produced for the broad market and are objects which are pleasant to hold and behold, which look effortless and unselfconscious, and which meet the reader without barriers to reading’.

Outrider Vol. 3 No. I (June 1986) is now available. Contents include an interview with Alberto Moravia, articles on literary translation by Philip Grundy and Vivian Smith, poems by Cornelis Vleeskens, Gary Catalano, Vincent Buckley, Bruce Dawe, and Antigone Kefala, and reviews by Elizabeth Perkins, and Manfred Jurgensen. A beautifully-produced issue, it’s illustrated with colour reproductions of the work of Cynthia Breusch and Kate Smith and black and white drawings by Francy de Grys as well as some excellent photographs.