The Song & the Silence: Metal Type & Spacing

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The Song & the Silence: Metal Type & Spacing

Dear Friends,

When I first began my journey into traditional printing, there was much to discover (still is); many “a-ha!” moments of learning and insight into the forms, functions, challenges, and beauties of type, ink, press, & paper.

One of those insights happened very early on as I first stood at a case of type, setting lines of a poem.

With a startle, I realized that the metal type that I was picking up and placing to form words, and the metal spaces that I was picking up and placing between words, were made of the same material: gleaming new “type metal” (an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony).

Each letter, in raised reverse on a “body," was cast from the very same thing as the spaces between words and lines. For a moment, I could visualize the alphabet rising from the once-molten metal to become printable poetry —  one and the same with the space, the silence, from which it came.

Seven years later, I still pause every now and then to marvel: at the beautiful and precise pieces of metal; at the centuries-old technologies and traditions that coalesce all these shiny shards into words, poems, books; and at the weight of language — all that is said and unsaid.

Thanks for joining me on this journey, friends.
All my best to all of you,
Emily

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Women In Printing History: Elizabeth Yeats

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Women In Printing History: Elizabeth Yeats

Dear Friends,

One of our passions here is learning about the history of printing and book-making, and, in particular, women in this lineage of craft and art. Some weeks ago we shared about one of our heroes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Now, here's a little spotlight on another amazing printer and publisher: Elizabeth Yeats.

If the surname sounds familiar, you are right ~ Elizabeth (1868-1940) was the sister of famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Here she is alongside her brother, in portraits that were done by their father, John.

While the Yeats family lived in London, Elizabeth learned the craft of book printing at the Women’s Printing Society. Her sister Lily became a talented embroiderer (studying with William Morris' daughter). They eventually moved back to County Dublin, Ireland, and helped to found the Dun Emer Guild & Industries in 1903. Operating as a kind of co-op, the Guild provided occupational training for women in several crafts like needlework and book making, and played a central role in the Irish Arts and Crafts movement.

Elizabeth ran what was first called the Dun Emer Press (in 1908) and then was the Cuala ("Koo-lah") Press.

Elizabeth wanted expressly to “revive the beautiful craft of book printing” in Ireland. She concentrated on publishing new work by many of the day’s famous authors, especially those associated with the Irish Literary Revival, including Ezra Pound and her brother WB. They also printed cards, pamphlets, and a monthly magazine. They had a huge output — some 70 books. The Cuala Press outlived her, and continued publishing books until 1946 (smaller ephemera until 1969).

The Yeats sisters at their press.

Thanks for joining me, friends. We'll have more spotlights on women in printing history in the months to come. If you have a favorite example you'd like to see featured, let me know!

All my best to all of you,
Emily

Emily Hancock
St Brigid Press
Afton, Virginia

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Women In Printing History: Mary Ann Shadd Cary

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Women In Printing History: Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Dear Friends,

As we celebrate and reflect on our nation's Independence this week, I am also thinking about and giving thanks for one of America's cornerstones: the freedom of the Press.

As a printer and publisher, my work is supported ~ is made possible ~ by the long lineage of people who have fought for and exercised their right to freely express themselves through various forms of media.

I'd like to introduce you to one of those people, a hero of mine from 19th century America: Mary Ann Shadd Cary.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893) was the first Black female publisher in North America. She grew up well-educated, in a family of free African-Americans in Delaware. Her family was very active in the antislavery movement and in the movement to relocate Blacks to places where slavery had been abolished. One of those relocation areas was what is now Ontario, Canada, and Mary Ann moved there with her brother, first establishing a school and then becoming a journalist and publisher. 

In 1853, Cary founded The Provincial Freeman, a newspaper “Devoted to anti-slavery, temperance, and general literature.” It also supported women’s suffrage, and it served the region’s African-Canadian community for 4 years. She traveled widely, wrote essays about racial and gender equality, and, after the Civil War and the death of her husband, she moved back to the United States and got a law degree from Howard University. Cary was an amazing woman blazing trails in publishing and civil rights in the 19th century. 

From Mary Katharine Goddard, who printed some of the first copies of the Declaration of Independence distributed to the states, to Mary Ann Shadd Cary, to today's smörgåsbord of print and electronic publishers, may we celebrate the freedom of the Press this 4th of July. And may we remain energized to participate and vigilant to preserve it ~ our democracy depends on it.

All my best,
Emily

Emily Hancock
St Brigid Press
Afton, Virginia

BELOW : The University of Virginia's replica of a wooden common press. For more information, see my post about attending a demonstration of this press at UVA with Josef Beery HERE!

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The Tools of the Trade

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The Tools of the Trade

Dear Friends,

Some days, the centuries collapse into a present that is rich with possibility. 

As I worked in the print shop this afternoon, I realized that that particular moment brought together people and their tools across an arc of time that stretched from 1850 to 2019, from Massachusetts to North Carolina, California to Virginia. I paused to let it all sink in.

Pictured here are multiple human tools, each with their own histories, hand-marks, and elegant uses. 

The brand-new shiny metal type in the case was cast for me by printer and type founder Patrick Reagh in Sebastopol, California. The typeface is Goudy Old Style, which Frederic Goudy designed in 1915. 

The text I’m setting is by Henry David Thoreau, from an entry in his journal in July, 1850, about cultivating one’s true work. 

I’m typesetting from that text as displayed on my laptop, which is propped up by the shaft of my great-grandfather’s wooden scythe. The computer is new(ish) and sports a fingerprint-resistant metal case. The scythe is probably close to 150 years old—the wood smoothed by long-use, fissured by sweat and time. 

Both my grandfathers were handcrafters who prized and cared well for the tools of their trades. My father’s father was a land surveyor, wood worker, and front porch whittler. My mother’s father was a carpenter, teacher, and army veteran. Both of them passed down to me a regard for the well-made, the joy and the worth of handwork, and also the pocket knives they each carried. 

The Native American stone blade pictured above with my grandfathers' pocket knives (and my hand) may be a thousand years old or more. As a young girl, I watched it emerge from a red North Carolina clay furrow one afternoon, as my paternal grandfather drove the 1952 tractor down his garden’s rows. Someone had worked this land long, long before my family. Someone who made, used, and cared for their tools, too. 

Now, I have the honor of doing the same.

From centuries-old implements to the latest digital tech, we wield powerful tools, friends. May we use them thoughtfully, and for a common good.

All my best,
Emily

Emily Hancock
St Brigid Press
Afton, Virginia

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New Letterpress Chapbook by Arthur Sze

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New Letterpress Chapbook by Arthur Sze

Every line of poetry is a horizon. It opens worlds, near or far; it's a seam, a beckoning, an edge where everything intersects; a traversal.

Some poets are masters of horizon lines ~ the edges of light, loss, existence. One of those is Arthur Sze. His poetry has opened myriad new vistas for me, both as a reader and as a writer. His use of penetrating, layered, kaleidoscopic imagery shakes me awake, and I open to a vast, intricate world of simultaneous existences, events, emotions. Sze’s poems unfold new visions and meanings with each reading, and I discover something new about the cosmos and my life in it. 

I am deeply honored to work with Arthur Sze to create a new chapbook of his poems called Starlight Behind Daylight—a collection of twelve pieces that resonate singly and collectively, that engage us on the knife-edge of now. Grouped in three sections of four, these poems converse with each other and with us. They bring into focus the simultaneities, the shifting possibilities, of life on earth together. 

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“Emily Hancock and I went back and forth discussing the poems that have been assembled in *Starlight Behind Daylight.* They consist of six poems from my latest book, *Sight Lines,* and six new poems that are in deep conversation with them. The process by which they came together was a true and exciting collaboration, and the ensuing poems move between snow and fire, darkness and light, emptiness and fruition.”
— Arthur Sze

The limited edition chapbook will be hand-set in Centaur and Arrighi types, letterpress printed, and hand-sewn here at St Brigid Press. (Price TBA.) More information and photos will be forthcoming as the project progresses. To receive our email newsletter with updates, and/or to reserve a chapbook, please email us — info@stbrigidpress.net

Until next time, all best wishes to each of you as you traverse the horizons before you!

Emily

Emily Hancock
St Brigid Press
Afton, Virginia

The header image of the Cat’s Paw Nebula courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC (https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA22567)

Photo of Arthur Sze by Forrest Gander.

Text by Emily Hancock and Arthur Sze.

Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.

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A Michigan Journey

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A Michigan Journey

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting poets and printers in Michigan, teaching a class on book making and traditional printing at Interlochen Arts Academy, and being present at the official launch of the newest chapbook from St Brigid Press—Seven River Prayers by Michael Delp. (There are only 5 chapbooks left, so if you’re interested, please see the webpage: www.stbrigidpress.net/books/seven-river-prayers )

Pencil points to Interlochen, Michigan.

The seed for the journey was planted months ago, when Mike Delp and I were conversing about the chapbook’s final stages. “Long-shot thought,” I wrote to him. “It would be pretty special to have some kind of book launch event. Or at least to try. What do you think the chances are that Interlochen Arts Academy or some other place you think is good would allow us to hold such an event?” From that wondering-out-loud, a whole wonderful week’s worth of traveling, connecting, and sharing evolved.

I left my Blue Ridge Virginia home on Sunday, March 31st, with a car-full of books, winter clothes, a tiny 1930s-era printing press, and an emergency tin chocked with my spouse’s homemade chocolate-chip cookies. I drove north-west through hours of snow showers. Eager to take a break from the highway, I got off the interstate in Ohio after seeing a sign for a natural area along the shores of Lake Erie east of Toledo. Around sunset, I pulled into Magee Marsh Wildlife Area (contiguous with Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge), and slowly drove the 1.5 mile park road. 

The wetlands were teeming with birds. Red-winged blackbirds were chatting in the brush along the edges of the road, and I rolled the windows down to take in their husky whistles (the air temperature was around freezing, but I didn’t care—this was the soundtrack to Spring!). As I rounded a woodlot into an expanse of wetland, two Sandhill Cranes banked over my car and settled down somewhere out in the marsh. Hundreds of waterfowl paddled, dabbled, and preened along the waterways—Pied-billed Grebes, Buffleheads, Ring-necked Ducks, gorgeous Northern Shovelers, and so many more. I stopped to listen and watch. Looking down at the darkening water at the road’s edge, I saw bubbles break the surface, a stream of them popping up for a dozen yards. Soon, the large chocolate-brown head of an adult beaver emerged. It swam past me, not twenty feet away, intent on its evening rounds. After the quick shadow of a Harrier strafed my car, I looked up—away to the west two Bald Eagles were flying toward their enormous nest, high in a tree along the lake shore. Stunned to grateful silence by it all, I resumed the highway just as last light was flaring neon yellow and pink through a distant snow squall.

The next day, already low on cookies, I drove in blessedly bright sunshine across Michigan to Hudsonville, just to the west of Grand Rapids and not far from the shores of Lake Michigan. There, I finally met-in-person the poet whose chapbook I had the honor of publishing in 2018— J. L. Davis. We had first connected through, of all things, Twitter. A couple of years ago, my admiration for her crystalline short-form poetry led to a conversation about the possibility of creating letterpress edition of some of her work. Wildflowers Ending debuted last November (and there are only 12 copies left; if you’re interested, see the webpage here— stbrigidpress.net/books/wildflowers-ending ). 

The poet Jessica Davis (L) and me.

The poet Jessica Davis (L) and me.

Jessica and her family generously put me up for the night last Monday, and we spent hours talking all things poetry-and-more over cups of ginger tea and, later, glasses of red wine. Like the beautiful oaks in her backyard, Jessica is an old soul; we traversed time and space, experience and emotion and creative expression, in our rich, wandering conversations. She’s as tuned to language and the heart as white pines are to wind and birdsong. Tuesday morning, I left their home filled with deep friendship, gratitude, and a baggie of delicious chocolate-chip muffins.

The road north lead into more snow. Due in Interlochen by late afternoon, I wanted to make a pilgrimage first to one of my early mentors in traditional fine press printing—Chad Pastotnik of Deep Wood Press. The ground began to whiten the further I went, until snow-plow piles of the dirty white stuff were banked higher than my head. I wound west and north of the small town of Mancelona until I found Chad’s place, tucked back in a grove of conifers along the swift Cedar River. Walking up to his shop across shoveled but icy walks, I inhaled the heady scent of the trees, the cold. A merganser floated past; a few chickadees announced me to the woods. 

Opening the studio door at my knock, Chad ushered me into his world—ink and iron, lush papers and sharp tools, eagle eyes and exactitude. One of the most accomplished fine press printers on the planet, he has operated Deep Wood Press since 1991. I came across images of Chad’s work early on in my learning about traditional printing and bookmaking, and it was truly an honor to experience DWP first-hand. He has an excellent collection of hand-set type and Linotype matrices for book work, and prints mostly on a venerable old Vandercook 219. In the time he generously shared with me, we talked over equipment, inks, his stunning library of fine press books, the business of book arts, and some of the finer points of colophon construction. I left filled with new knowledge, inspiration, and more gratitude.

Winding my way southwest in the late afternoon cold drizzle, I glimpsed frozen Lake Michigan from Traverse City before dropping down to the world-renowned Interlochen Center for the Arts. I checked into the Stone Hotel on campus, where my second-story window looked out on frozen Green Lake. The sky and the ice were nearly the same pearl-grey color, with a green-black scar of coastline between. A few crows careened from the top of a pine and out across the expanse. 

Green Lake, Interlochen, Michigan.

At 6pm that evening, I went downstairs to the hotel lobby, where Michael Delp was waiting for me. The connection and rapport I’d felt with him through social media and email was immediately incarnated with a hearty hug and a deep dive into conversation. He took us a few miles down the road to Bud’s Coffee Shop, a local hangout. Over burgers and coffee, we rambled all over the woods—poetry and the poets we’ve known, families and dogs, his 30 years of teaching and administrating at Interlochen, his passion for words and rivers. As with Jessica Davis, after so long in electronic communication it was fantastic to actually sit across a table from each other and talk. It felt like we’d just got started when it was time to head back to campus and try to get my brain unwound enough for sleep.

The next morning dawned bright and cold. Mike drove us a short ways east of campus to the spectacular little retreat he and his wife have on the banks of the Boardman River. We crunched down the slick slope of old snow to the fast-moving water—sunlight and eddies whorled across the surface. “It’s pretty high right now,” Mike said of the water level. “Usually I can walk across here to the other bank.” The small old cottage, renovated and enlarged over the years, held comfy furniture, fly rods, a wood stove, and a view of heaven. Before we left, I followed Mike up the steep grade through open stands of hemlock, poplar, and ash (the latter mostly decimated by the green ash borer beetle), stepping in his boot-prints for purchase in the crusted snow layer. Just a handful of miles as the crow flies from Interlochen, this place was a world away. And the beating heart of Mike and his family.

We headed back to campus in time for lunch with the Creative Writing Department Faculty. Mika Perrine, a friend and former student of Mike’s, is the Interim Director of the department, and the one who made it possible for me to come visit. She and Joe Sacksteder (the incoming Director, as of June 1st) and Bri Cavallaro and her husband Chase all welcomed me generously amid a cafeteria bustling with high-school boarding students carrying instrument cases and be-stickered laptops. The energy, intensity, and vigor of students and teachers alike was palpable. After an hour, this middle-aged introvert was excited and exhausted at the same time!

Photo courtesy of The Writing House Instagram account.

The master class on book arts that the department had invited me to do started at 3:30pm. By 3, the splendid Great Room of The Writing House was filling with students. After a bit of fiddling with the projector, Mika and Joe got my computer slideshow running, and I launched into a brief presentation on the history, immediacy, and vitality of traditional printing and publishing: “The Body of the Book: Toward an Embodied Ecology of Literature.” The students and faculty listened as I prattled on for a bit, until the talk drew to a close and it was time to get busy and actually make something. 

I passed around baggies of paper, punching awl, needle, and thread. In a short while, these dedicated, accomplished authors (students and teachers alike) had made a couple of blank books to hold their new ideas and creations. As they finished, I invited each one up to the table where I’d set up the only printing press I can lift—a sweet old 1930s-era hobby press—and everyone pulled a keepsake print. Huzzah! What a delight to meet and work with these young folks and their teachers. What an honor to spread the gospel of handmade books and letterpress printing to the likes of these brilliant human beings! 

Directly on the heels of the class was the official launch of Michael Delp’s Seven River Prayers. The students moved en masse from the tables where we made the booklets to front row seats near the lectern. Faculty, friends and family of Mike’s, and community members filled the other seats. Mika called us all to attention and shared Mike’s bio, then turned the proceedings over to him. An old hand with a gathering of literature-lovers, Mike held us rapt with his particular rhythm of reading—sharing a poem; sharing part of his process as a writer; a quote by Jim Harrison; sharing another poem; a quote by Thoreau; sharing about the making of the book; one more poem. Five minutes in, we were all converts to this force-of-nature poetic experience. Including, apparently, Mike’s own grandson—four month old Wilder, bouncing in his parents’ arms at the back of the room, gurgled and burbled at his Grandad reading poetry. The expression of love and joy on Mike’s face was transcendent. 

After the reading, folks hung out for a bit and talked, got their copies of the chapbook signed, and came up to the St Brigid Press table to peruse the show-and-tell display of type and tools. I had left one of Mike’s poems composed in metal type, so that folks could see some of the process of traditional printing, and also took along 125-year-old wood type letters to heft in hand. There’s nothing like picking up and holding language in its three-dimensional forms.

Mike and his wonderful wife Claudia, Joe Sacksteder, and a couple of their dear friends and I went out for a delicious supper that evening. (My first taste of Lake Superior whitefish was terrific.) More engaging and inspiring conversation flowed, first over food and later over a celebratory glass of wine at Mike’s and Claudia’s sweet, dog- and book-filled home on the shore of Green Lake. When Mike dropped me back off at the hotel, I stood outside my car for a while, cleaning ink off the press under cold starry skies. As with each experience on this trip, when night fell and I crawled back into the hotel bed, I felt at the same time exhausted, elated, and full of profound gratitude. 

The 1930s-era traveling printing press.

Next morning, there was only one thing left to do—head home. And I was ready! By 7:52am I pulled out of the campus parking lot and headed southeast, into a bitter cold but blessedly bright day. Around mid afternoon I reached the outskirts of Toledo, and decided to stop back by the wildlife refuge. Tree swallows were swooping and swirling over a pond near the entrance to the visitors center, and a Great Blue Heron and several Egrets stalked the edges. I drove the marsh road again, past clusters of waterfowl, to where it ended by the shoreline of Lake Erie. The fierce wind nearly blew me over as I approached the pounding, latte-colored lake edge on foot, crunching over low berms of empty shells . Seagulls winged by, west to east, unfazed by the gale. Turning back from the razor wind to the thin line of woods separating shore from marsh, I spied two Bald Eagle nests high in still-bare trees. Both were occupied, and I regarded with awe those parents hunkered against snow and cold, sheltering new life.

As I left the wildlife area and worked my way towards the interstate past fields of stubble, I must have seen a dozen more eagles. The day, and my energies, diminished as I left Ohio and pressed east into the ridges and valleys of western Pennsylvania, and I stopped for the night on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. The next morning broke with a cold rain, and I finished the long road-trip in soggy fog. It was all worth it, though, when I finally rolled up our driveway and was welcomed home into my spouse’s open arms and the pup’s ecstatic leaps. 

What an amazing, 1757-mile journey—new places, new people, new experiences, and enduring friendships, memories, and deep gratitude. 

Home very-sweet home.

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A Day of Peace

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A Day of Peace

Late this afternoon, as I was hauling wood by hand up to the house in the growing twilight, I thought of Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things.” In it, the speaker asserts that being present with nature—with the wood duck and heron, still water and stars—restores him, returns him to the state of wild grace that our fraught human existence often fractures and masks. 

I was tired, the tractor wouldn’t start, and sleet was forecast overnight. Grabbing a small dolly, I loaded fragrant splits of white oak onto its frame. The second time trudging up the hill from the woodshed, I suddenly woke up to the sound of birds. Without the tractor’s rattle, I could hear all the small lives that were preparing for night—the cheeps and whistles of sparrows, titmice, a phoebe. Instead of the heaviness of the wood, I felt light. Breathed in chilly, smoke-scented air. Looked up to clouds purling in from the west. Said, thank you.

 A fit, graced end to this day of printing peace. 

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“peace” holiday cards on press this morning —

using antique wood type from the St Brigid Press collection

“Peace” holiday cards on press this afternoon —

composed with metal type and ornaments

And now, an evening by the fire.

May you all be well, warm, and filled with peace.

Our trusty Jøtel woodstove, warming us this chilly night.

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Women in Literature: Past, Present, & Future

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Women in Literature: Past, Present, & Future

Last week, I had the great pleasure of being a guest in a Women in Literature class at Northern Virginia Community College (Woodbridge). Professor Indigo Eriksen, a fabulous poet and teacher whom I had met some years ago at a poetry festival, invited me to show her students a simple sewn binding technique that they could use for their end-of-term chapbook projects.

"Women in Literature" students hand-sewing their first notebooks.

"Women in Literature" students hand-sewing their first notebooks.

That initial intent blossomed into spending an hour and a half with her wonderful class, sharing about the history of women in printing and publishing, sewing a couple of notebooks together, and letterpress printing a keepsake on an old traveling press. Later that afternoon, I gathered with about twenty other students in the campus auditorium to talk about poetry, writing, language, and to read a bit from my own work in The Open Gate: New & Selected Poems. 

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I was incredibly moved and invigorated by the engagement of these young women in the class, and the women & men at the reading. They were so present, interested and interesting, bright, and energized. They asked thoughtful, insightful questions, and deepened my own curiosity and understanding about language and literature. The students in the class took to sewing like ducks to water, and they are now part of the great lineage of women who have made a book! I am honored to have crossed paths with them all, and look forward to seeing their creative lives unfold. 

Here's a video of a happy printer ~ Janae printing her first letterpress piece on the 1930 Kelsey 3x5 press!

Here are a few photos from our conversation later that afternoon about poetry, writing, and publishing:

Here are a few slides from what I shared with the students about the history of women in printing and publishing. It's a long and vibrant history, one that they are now a part of!

Many, many thanks to Professor Indigo Eriksen, the fantastic students at Northern Virginia Community College Woodbridge, and Deans David Epstein & Michael Turner for inviting me to spend a wonderful afternoon with them!

All best wishes to all, 

Emily Hancock

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A Letterpress Lexicon, Part 4: Spacing Out

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A Letterpress Lexicon, Part 4: Spacing Out

Hi, Friends of St Brigid Press!

Here is the long-awaited fourth installment in our occasional blog series ~ A Letterpress Lexicon ~ about the words and phrases that identify printing's particular tools and processes. Enjoy!

If you missed the first posts in this series, you can find them here:

A Letterpress Lexicon Part 4 ~ Spacing Out

We space out daily here at the Press ~ all for a good cause. ;-) 

You might already know that every single letter of the alphabet that we set and print here is a physical piece of metal or wood ~ a piece .918-inches tall, with the reverse image of the letter on the top, in relief. 

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Hand-set type:

Moveable type, which makes everything possible here at the Press. Here, the letters of the word "haiku" in metal.

Well, every single SPACE between every word and every line is also a physical piece of metal or wood. These pieces are made a little lower than the top of the letters, so that they do not pick up ink.

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The forme:

In this photo, you can see all of the metal spacing material surrounding the metal letters. The spacing material is a bit lower in height, so it does not get ink on it, and comes in various sizes according to the size of the type (12-point, 24-point, etc.). The spacing between the lines of type is also metal, cut to length.

The spacing material is cast to a point-size matching the size of the type body being set ~ from tiny 6-point to giant (and heavy!) 72-point in our shop. Spacing is also cast in various standard widths, so the typesetter can put larger or smaller spaces between words, as desired. These widths range from multiples of an "em" (the square of the type body; for example, a 12-point-by-12-point square) to "thins" (brass and copper slivers to fill in the smallest gaps in a line).

In addition to letter spacing, strips of metal also need to be correctly sized and set between lines of type ("leading" or "linespacing"). This strip material comes in various widths and can be cut to various lengths (also called "slugs") ~ all tailored to ordering the printed page. 

The whole point of spacing is to surround the letters and lines as snug as possible. A loose letter can print unevenly, and even become damaged. 

The final step before printing is to surround the whole forme (the letters and spaces) with "furniture" ~ blocks of wood (sometimes metal) in various standard sizes that fill out the chase. Two quoins (a kind of lock) are placed in as well, and when turned with a key the quoins tighten everything together. 

When the forme to be printed is locked up tight, I can lift it off the table and into the press without fear of everything collapsing onto the floor.

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The printer:

Emily, holding a tightly locked forme in mid-air. If the spacing material has been set correctly, the whole thing can be transferred easily to the printing press. If it has NOT been set correctly... well.. catastrophe can ensue. 

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The printed page:

Now, when you see a printed page, you'll think of the actual mass and work of all that "white space"! Shown here, a leaf from Jeff Schwaner's Wind Intervals.

So, that's the story of SPACE at St Brigid Press! 

Thanks for spacing out with us for a few minutes ;-)

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Dwelling in Possibility: Adrienne Rich, Poetry, & Printing

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Dwelling in Possibility: Adrienne Rich, Poetry, & Printing

Dwelling in Possibility:

Adrienne Rich, Poetry, & Printing

An introduction by Emily Hancock

Adrienne Rich. Photo copyright by Robert Giard.

Adrienne Rich. Photo copyright by Robert Giard.

There are some touchstone texts that seem to be always current, always resonant with wisdom, always “present” with us, whatever the year and however much the political and/or personal landscapes may have changed. 

Many of the essays of Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) are such touchstones. I first encountered the transformative work of this American poet and essayist in graduate school, in her prose collection Blood, Bread, and Poetry, in which she declares (with Audre Lorde) that poetry is not (and poets are not) superfluous, but as necessary and nourishing as food and air to the person—the people—we might be and become. Poetry is communion and it is frontier—the meeting of the other and the self.

Jacket for St Brigid Press' edition of Adrienne Rich's essay, printed letterpress on Thai mulberry "water drops" paper.

One of Rich’s essays, “Permeable Membrane,” is this sort of text—invigorating, relentless, and charged with readiness to affect (infect?) the reader with its power and possibility. Again and again. First published in 2006, “Permeable Membrane” is a short piece capable of waking us up, of challenging our complacency, our silence, and our siloed existences.

Convinced of the inseparability of art and society, poetry and politics, Rich argues for and invokes a relational understanding of language: "Art is a way of melting out through one's own skin. 'What, who is this about?' is not the essential question. A poem is not about; it is out of and to.” As individuals and communities and a nation, we exist in a dynamic ocean of thought, culture, politics. We’re in the conversation—“root-tangled in the grit of human arrangements and relationships,” as Rich writes—whether we know it, like it, or actively participate in it or not.

Rich navigates both mystery (the “ghostly” presence and process of writing poetry) and politics (solidarity movements, dictatorship, and the American political machine) with equal subtlety, drawing from sources historical and literary to illuminate the world we find ourselves in as well as some of the choices and consequences that are laid before us. With the precision and prescience of an artist who has her finger on our pulse, Rich’s essay that was first published 12 years ago reads like it hit the newsstand this morning.

St Brigid Press' letterpress printed edition releases on March 8th—International Women's Day.

St Brigid Press' edition of "Permeable Membrane" was hand-set in Goudy Old Style type (cast by Patrick Reagh in California), printed on a hand-cranked press, and sewn by hand. 

Why print something that is still available in numerous books and anthologies? One answer is that part of the job of craft is to make new what is not; to re-new and re-connect us, from the craftperson’s hand to the receiver’s. From me to you. An energetic and artistic renewal, and a conversation, happens in this process. The poet and essayist Jane Hirshfield says, “A work of art is not a piece of fruit lifted from the tree branch: it is a ripening collaboration of artist, receiver, and world.”

Another answer is personal to me: as much as I believe in and engage with the fantastic literature that is emerging daily, I believe in and desire to offer anew the already written—works like Rich’s and Thoreau’s and King’s that for years have been leaping off pages, enlarging perspectives, and spurring creative engagement. Each time we return to these touchstones, their wisdom becomes present again, positive change for our communities becomes possible again, and we become empowered again.

My hope for offering this edition of Adrienne Rich’s “Permeable Membrane” is that you may lean with her into the conversation and perhaps join more consciously in the great current of art that is making and re-making us, the poetry that is “language intensified, intensifying our sense of possible reality.”

If you would like to order the St Brigid Press edition of "Permeable Membrane," please click HERE. Scroll down below for additional details and photos of the booklet and the process of creating it.

The booklet's technical specs:

  • Hand-set in Goudy Old Style metal types, with Phenix titling.
  • 16 pages, letterpress printed on Mohawk Superfine text paper, with Thai mulberry paper jacket.
  • Frontispiece print is a digital reproduction of an original watercolor by Nancy Maxson, commissioned specially for this publication.
  • Hand-sewn with Irish linen thread.
  • Limited edition of 190 numbered copies.
  • $28 each.

Very special thanks and appreciation goes to our friend and collaborator Nancy Maxson, who created a marvelous watercolor painting, entitled Mirror, to accompany this edition of "Permeable Membrane." The painting was digitally reproduced on fine vellum paper at Bailey Printing in Charlottesville, and serves as the frontispiece to the edition.

Thanks also to W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., for permission to reprint "Permeable Membrane."

If you'd like to read more of Adrienne Rich's prose writing, here are a few titles to get you started:

  • A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997-2008 (the collection in which "Permeable Membrane" appears)
  • Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations (which collects Rich's earlier essay, "Blood, Bread, and Poetry")
  • What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics

Some photos of "the making of" our edition of "Permeable Membrane": click the images to see a larger photo and accompanying text.

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