TIM INKSTER started in the basement -- that is, shovelling out the basement of 671 Spadina Avenue in Toronto, the famous address where the House of Anansi, New Press, and Press Porcepic all began. Inkster graduated from the University of Toronto in 1970 and went to work at Porcepic for one of his professors, Dave Godfrey. But he and his wife, Elke, decided that Toronto was a lousy place to live on low wages, and persuaded Godfrey to move Porcepic out of town. Godfrey chose Erin, Ontario. The Porcupine`s Quill, the press that Tim and Elke Inkster eventually founded, might be called "second wave," arising directly out of that first wave of nationalist Canadian publishing that began in 1967. Working as the printer for Porcepic, Tim Inkster (what a wonderfully fated name) became frustrated by Godfrey`s unwillingness to invest in a decent printing press. So in 1974 he and Elke started Porcupine`s Quill simply as a production arm. But when the arrangement didn`t work out, the Inksters decided to become independent, bought their own building across the street where they still operate -- and lived above it. it. If the backlist of the press seems a rather eclectic mix of poetry, fiction, visual art, criticism, and young adult novels, the reason is that the press developed its editorial taste somewhat after the fact. Tim Inkster says, "Our first book was in 1975. By that time we`d been doing quite a bit of book printing for a variety of small publishers. And I was frustrated as a printing craftsman that I couldn`t convince any of the publishers to put the kind of money that I thought appropriate into some of these titles for their best presentation " To show them how fine a book could look, Inkster obtained a poetry manuscript from an old college friend, Brian Johnson (now the film reviewer for Maclean`s), and a new publishing line was born. Over the years the press`s books have won design awards from the Alcuin Society and the Art Directors` Club of New York. While the editorial direction has been less consistent than the production values, Porcupines Quill has still published an impressive group of writers: Hugh Hood, Richard Outram, James Reaney and Robin Skelton among them. Recently two titles, Jane Urquhart`s Storm Glass and Mark Frutkin`s Atmospheres Apollinaire, were picked up by David R. Godine in the United States. Over the years writers such as Urquhart and Joe Rosenblatt have helped out as voluntary editors. But now an overworked Inkster (whose printing operation subsidizes the press) has given over much of the editorial decision-making to a triumvirate of experienced and, to say the least, opinionated editors: John Metcalf, John Newlove, and J. R. (Tim) Struthers. The three have already brought a new, invigorated direction to the press. "I think it is an unusual situation, but one that I`m very pleased about," says Metcalf, the fiction writer and polemicist who for years has been trying to shake up Canada`s literary establishment. Metcalf and Inkster first discussed Porcupine`s Quill over dinner two years ago at the University of Guelph. Out of that conversation has come Sherbrooke Street, a reprint series whose first titles are Ray Smith`s Cape Breton Is the Thought Control Centre of Canada, Irving Layton`s The Improved Binoculars, and Clark Blaise`s Lunar Attractions. While Inkster has his eye on the university market, Metcalf is hoping these reprints will capture that elusive beast, the general reader. "I thought that the series was necessary in Canada because we lose our culture every 15 to 20 years," he says. "Suddenly it`s as though collective memory has been wiped out and we have to start all over again." Forthcoming in the series are selected editions of Hugh Hood and Leon Rooke, as well -as Norman Levine`s Canada Made Me and From a Seaside Town. Metcalf plans to emphasize both the short story and new writers, and he has done both with well-received first collections by Terry Griggs and Dayv James-French. Another first book, by Don Dickinson, is imminent, and Metcalf is currently working on a book of stories by the poet Steven Heighton. Metcalf says, "What I`m looking for is stuff that just comes off the page at me. Where the language is vital and interesting. When you read the first paragraph it`s as though you`re receiving an electric shock. And that kind of feeling tends to go with formal innovation." Yet another line is Metcalf`s series of deliberately unacademic critical books, in contrast to the academic studies series Critical Directions, which is under Struthers`s control. He and Struthers are working together to compile How Stories Mean, a collection of essays by Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Clark Blaise, and others. The book ovill show that the short story is a performance or experience, rather than an intellectual puzzle to he understood. "I`m hoping to wrest away from the academy many of the judgements and opinions about literature that they`ve been handing us for the last 30 years," Metcalf says. "We`re entirely captive to the academy and I think it`s a disastrous thing for the literature." Metcalf and his editorial colleagues also hope to rewrite our literary past with a series of histories and bibliographies. Currently being written for the press are an annotated checklist of the House of Anansi by Douglas Fetherling, a history of the Contact Press by Bruce Whiteman, and a book on collecting Canadian literature by the Toronto bookseller Steven Temple. This is indeed a new era for The Porcupines Quill, and it looks to be a very interesting one for the general readers out there, as well.