Goose Hill

The Pantone Matching System --not the PMS you were thinking, right? This is the system that assigns numbers to letterpress ink colors (and also identifies the components of standard ink colors that make up each numbered shade or tint). Emily and I finished our printing on Sunday, which required delving into more than just standard black rubber-based ink we've using to print Sleight 's text. To print the lovely logo Emily carved on our full title page, we needed two colors. The first and lighter color would be applied to the uncarved linoleum block of the same dimensions as our Thread Lock logo (PMS-197). The second, much darker color would be applied to the carved block (PMS-202)--so the carved-away recesses show up in the first color and the uncarved background in the second. Now the deep maroon ink that is PMS-202 we actually found pre-mixed on Mike's print shop-shelves, but the elusive PMS-197 we had to mix ourselves. Sadly, I am an idiot and forgot to bring my ca...

We're just about finished printing Sleight now. The only bit left is the run with colored inks (red and pink, we think). That is only on one page though: the full title page. Emily carved a logo design for Thread Lock Press (and Sleight , as the first production from TLP) in a linoleum block--which means we can put this image in the Vandercook and print it just like letterpress type! I can't wait to see how this turns out.

Monday was a day of productivity in the Lit House print shop. Emily and I were hard at work on our beloved book project all the cloudy, rainy holiday afternoon. Although our end and cover papers are on backorder, for our text paper we are using a lovely mold-made creamy white German paper that we found in Master Printer Mike Kaylor's personal stores in the print shop and purchased from him. So that was at hand and ready to be printed, as soon as we could cut it down to size: 7.5" x 12". Mike had just had the blade sharpened on his enormous paper guillotine, so he helped us with that. Then we moved the poem type (which had already been set over the last few weeks) to the beautiful Vandercook press that we would be using for printing. We managed to run off all three poems in their batches of 50, except when I got home, I discovered to my disappointment that even though I thought we had thoroughly proofed them, the 50 sheets of "Jack" still managed two delinquent l...

All three poems have been set now. So we shift focus to what they will be printed on (I tried this sentence without ending in a preposition and it just didn't work for me--so excuse the grammatical error). For the text paper, Emily and I searched the bowels of the print shop at the Literary House (Mike always some great extras laying around). We decided on a creamy white handmade paper with soft deckled edges. For the cover and end papers we went to Paper Mojo . They have some absolutely beautiful paper! After ordering some samples and having a look at them in person, we decided on the Mauve Unryu Thread paper for the end papers (figuring that the delicate translucent quality of the paper goes well with our "sleight" theme and the reddish threading follows our color scheme) and the Ivory Linen Cardstock for the cover paper. We will be printing on the covers with a deep red ink (similar to our thread color). Now we are just waiting for our backordered paper pick...

I've been making weekly visits to Mike Kaylor's print shop at the O'Neill Literary House to start working on the Sleight book project. So far I have the type for the first two poems set and have begun setting the type for the last one. Setting type letter by letter by space by punctuation mark is a tedious, slightly disorienting, but oddly relaxing task. Lines of poetry are set in the usual order: from top to bottom, from right to left (on the page)--with type that means that one places the character sorts (pieces of lead type) in this same order, but backwards and upside down on the composing stick. Even the character sorts themselves are the reversals their printed selves. So when searching around in the job case, 'b's look like 'd's, 'd's look like 'b's, 'p's look like 'q's, and 'q's look like 'p's. Sometimes we don't even realize we've switched these letters until we print the first sheet and proof...

Emily has finished her beautiful watercolor paintings illustrating my three poems: "Jack," "Queen of Clover," and "Childling King"--and I am in love with them. You can read the poems here , if you wanted. Now it's time to get down to the actual makings of the book. I am so excited! First, we need a press name. My press name for my solo projects is Goose Hill Press (could've guessed that one, right?); for my projects with Emma it is Chester Cat Press; and I'm still thinking about what to name my collaborations with Emily. Right now, I'm favoring Thread Lock Press, but we'll see what she thinks. And we've already got a title for the book itself. It is to be called Sleight . This title was decided upon because of the many ways in which this word naturally draws upon the themes inherent in the poems and paintings: Sleight as in "sleight of hand" card tricks (as explained in an earlier post, these three poems play with the Cal...

So it's now nearly August, my basil plants seem to be thriving and the rosemary is still green. The garlic bulbs have grown shoots and gone a bit brown but they're still too young and small to dig up, so I think harvest-time will come in a few more seasons. I have also gotten two poetry submissions together for literary magazines. Three poems each, I have submitted one set to Weave magazine , a great small-press magazine to which I just began subscribing; and the second set I plan to submit to Ecotone , a university-press journal (to which I am also a recent subscriber) with the awesome tagline: "reimagining place." How cool is that? I am hopeful but I don't expect publication. We'll see. This may be my lucky break. I was also recently offered to come aboard the newly-created Chestertown Book Festival, to be known as ChesBookFest . I was nominated to the position of secretary of the official planning committee and I have to say that I am very excited to be a p...