On Pantone & printing & poems

On February 1, Dream Pop Press published my first two visual poems in their Winter 2018 Issue! "(lady's thumb / plate 45)" and "(nightshade & bittersweet / plate 173)" are both poem-collages from my Silence of the Lambs series. The latter of these even made the front of the issue. 

In other good news, I've also finally broken out of my 9-month writing slump. My new pieces are feminist letterpress/printshop poems for Women's Work—my in-progress collaborative chapbook with fellow poet-printer Emma Sovich. 


It's a funny feeling picking up an old project again. But I feel even better equipped to write these poems now that I've had a few more years to steep in broadside printing and letterpress love. I'm especially excited about the poem I'm working on right now, titled "Girl as Pantone Matching System." It's all about ink-mixing and menstruation. It's made up of short lyric sections that are each titled with a different PMS number—all of which are, naturally, different shades of menstrual blood. Writing alongside my Pantone formula guide has been such a strange and fun combination of my two favorite art forms. 

 More than anything else, I'm so happy and relieved to be writing new poems again. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Imago" on Hannibal season finale

Image
While watching the eagerly-awaited season 2 finale of Hannibal (one of my absolute favorite TV shows of the moment), I was happily surprised when a vocabulary lesson emerged mid-conversation between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. — "Do you know what an imago is, Will?" — "It's a flying insect." — "It's the last stage of a transformation." — "When you become who you will be?" — "It's also a term from the dead religion of psychoanalysis. An imago is an image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives." — "An ideal." — "The concept of an ideal." Of course this term, in both of its definitions, has some great significance for me. It is a word I didn't even know until I stumbled across it in my dictionary browsing and knew immediately that this is the title of my chapbook . It was perfect. So when it snuck up on me again in my favorite TV show, in
Read more

There are birds here

Image
We are now in the full porch-swing of summer, which means Summer Poetry Salons at my beloved Lit House. In celebration of the second salon of the summer on June 24 (tomorrow!), I was given the unbelievably fun task of designing and printing a letterpress broadside for Jamaal May's poem "There Are Birds Here,"  a love song for Detroit. As much I loved this poem on my first reading (and second and third), it was a particularly difficult design challenge. Don't get me wrong — there are so many ways  to illustrate this poem because it is so packed with images. But to illustrate it in a way that actually adds to the text, that builds on the complex foundation set down by the poet — that is the challenge to be met. That is the challenge we always aim to meet at the Literary House Press .   So that means no birds and no buildings. For me, those are the two most obvious, but least important images in this poem. Those details are just the shell around the actual poem
Read more

On the end of a year & a decade: 2019

Image
In this last month of the year, I've had five poems accepted by three different literary journals and two new reviews of my book appear in The Cincinnati Review  and Harbor Review . I also completed the letterpress printing of the Rossetti Prize broadside for American Literary Review , designs for four more digital broadsides , and the initial edits & contributor proofs for Cherry Tree 's sixth issue. Whew! It's been an amazing and overwhelming and utterly fulfilling year ; and I'm riding into the new year on 2019's coattails.  Also featuring the gorgeous handmade scarf that Jehanne Dubrow wove for me this past year. One of my favorite December inventories will always be reflecting on a year's worth of personal accomplishments and progress. By the time the end of the year arrives, it's so easy to forget all that happened just a few short months ago. Making a list has a way of bringing it all into perspective. Here's my roundup for the yea
Read more