Sophie Kerr Portfolio
III: Book Learning
Dying Grasses Whisper of Memories
A Poetry Book Project created by Caroline A. Knuth
and executed with the aid and guidance of Master Printer Mike Kaylor
at the Rose O’Neill Literary House.
Funded by the Douglas Cater Society of Junior Fellows.
January – April 2011
Many thanks to all the students who helped along the way – from workshops, to late night paper folding, to moral support. And especially thanks to Kat Muller, who ended up binding the majority of the books and giving me a lot of hugs.
Letterpress Printing: Practical and Beautiful
The project I have completed is very different than the majority of the projects completed with the help of the Cater Society. I neither left campus nor formulated a hypothesis to be tested. The end result was not a conclusion on an academic subject, but rather a physical object: a book. The book consists of twelve poems I wrote with four block illustrations I carved. The entire book was created by hand and is a work of reflection and meditation rather than analysis.
My own impetus for this project comes from the day I first set foot in the Print Shop at the Rose O’Neill Literary House and realized that students could put their own words into print. Especially for young writers, the probability of seeing their work in print is very slim, and so this opportunity seems an obvious one of which to take advantage. There have been students over the years who have put their own poem or piece of prose into the press and created broadsides; four years ago three students poets got together to create a book. As far as I know, my undertaking is the first time a single student has undertaken to create an entire book of her own work. It is hoped that this will serve as an example and inspiration for future students to create projects of their own. Here is proof that self-publication is an option available to writers who struggle to break through the fierce competition for a place in a magazine or journal. Additionally, self-publication allows the author complete control over the outcome of the project. With no publishing company to answer to, the only restriction on a self-publishing endeavor is cost of materials. With help from foundations such as the Cater Society, even this restriction becomes irrelevant. Working without limitations allows the author’s vision to become fully realized; every decision made can contribute to the meaning and desired aesthetic of the book.
The aesthetic and meaning I was looking for in my project was a simple beauty. The book was meant to become a means to invoke reflection in the viewer. To this end, the poems were chosen carefully and the materials considered deeply. The beauty of the materials, the care with which the books were crafted, and the physical impressions created by the type in the paper are all visible evidence of the work put into this project and ask for the viewer not only to appreciate this work, but to look for such details in the world around them. Especially in today’s fast-paced, high-tech world, it is necessary to have speed bumps, things that catch our eye and make us slow down. The poems themselves, accompanied by the illustrations, are the primary means by which the book will create these moments of slowing. Readers will begin to reflect on their own memories and the effects of time on our lives. I hope that the beauty I express in my poetry will inspire readers to look again at the world around them to see the beauty themselves.
How to Make a Poetry Book:
Writing and Revising
Since I was very young, I have been creating art; both written and visual. The idea that one day my poems could fit together into a book took hold as early as middle school when I was part of the Writing Club. It takes a long time to build up enough a backlog of writing that a coherent and strong manuscript can be created from individual poems. The process of collecting, revising, and editing the manuscript was underway about a year before materials were even purchased. Poems that had been previously workshopped in classes were looked at again in the context of the manuscript, brought to friends and teachers, and revised until I felt they accomplished the reflective state I was looking for. Putting together the document in a mock-up on computer paper allowed me to see the flow, do some re-arranging, and line editing. Decisions about illustrations came next; placement within the text, content, and style.
Materials
The final layout could then be used to calculate how much paper would be needed to create 150 copies. We had to calculate not only the number of pages, but also the most effective way to cut the paper so as to get the largest number of pages from each sheet. Also taken into consideration was the fact that some pages would go through the press up to four times: front, back, and illustrations on each side. For each run through the press, it is best to get at least an extra 5-10% more pages than needed to allow for proofing and messing up a few. Paper for the text had to be thick enough to give substantiality to such a slim volume and be receptive to an impression from the type. I chose a lightly textured creamy German mould-made paper. The inspiration for the cover layout (with the accent of marbleized paper) came from another book I found in the Print Shop. I looked for a marbleized paper that I thought captured the essence of the “drying grasses” and then a pale green paper to match it to cover the boards for the cover.
Book materials on their way, the next step was to send the poems to a company who could create photopolymer plates from which to print. Setting the type by hand for so many poems would be tedious and we would run the risk of not having enough type of a given font. The plates are like thin hard plastic stickers with the text raised on them. The backing is peeled off so they can be stuck to a base that will put them at the same height as the lead type. The title page and colophon were set by hand since they required more careful arrangement of each line and spacing between them. Type-setting is done with a “composing stick;” rather like a tiny hand-held tray into which each letter is placed. The way the composing stick is held, the text is upside down and backwards. Fortunately it does not take very long to become accustomed to the strange view. If the line of text does not take up the entire tray, the appropriate point size of spacing is used to fill in the rest of the line. The end result is a solid little block of text that can then be put into the press bed and locked into place with larger blocks of filler. Each case of type in our shop contains both upper and lower case letters (once they were separate; hence the names “upper” and “lower case”) for a single font, size, and style. This means that to change from Palatino 12pt. to Palatino 24pt. a different case will have to be pulled out. And then to change to Garamond 24pt. italic, yet another case must be pulled.
Printing
The poems, title page, and colophon were printed first and then their accompanying illustrations. I printed two pages at a time on one sheet of paper to cut down on printing time. When the printing was done, all the stacks of paper then had to be cut in half before they could be folded into signatures (grouped sets of pages) and stitched into codex format. The press we used was a Vandercook Model 4 Printing Press from the 1940s, designed specifically to print broadside-sized pages. When the first page goes through the press, it is just an educated guess as to where the type should be. The process of making prints and checking them for mistakes (either in the text itself or in the placement on the page) is called proofing. Once you have a page perfectly aligned, then the printing can begin. It is best to count out the correct number of pages first. The actual printing of all the pages is a very mechanical process; one gets into a routine and must only keep an eye out for when it is time to add more ink to the press.
Binding
Several friends of mine are helping with the binding process. The first step is to fold the pages and put them the correct order. The cloth for the spine was cut and folded and put with the folded pages. A cradle is used to hold the folded pages and allow for ease of putting holes in the crease. A model piece of paper is created so that all the holes are in the same place and equidistant on each book. These pre-made holes make stitching the signature much easier. We used a simple pamphlet stitch since it the entire book is just one signature. The cover boards could them be glued to the spine’s cloth and suddenly it looks much more like a book. A soft green paper was used to cover the boards, hiding the cloth’s rough edges. The last pages of the signature could then be glued to the inside covers (endpaper), hiding the edges folded in from the cover paper. The accent paper was the last to be put on. The binding is the most labor-intensive portion of the project, requiring careful attention for every step. It is helpful to have several sets of hands working on the binding (unlike with the printing where it often ends up like the proverbial “too many cooks in the kitchen” when everyone is crowding the press). As soon as we have a sufficient number of books completed, I will take them down to the bookstores in Chestertown to see if any of them are interested in trying to sell a few copies.
The Historical Factor
The learning that happens in the Print Shop is not only physical processes, but also academic material. Over the past four years that I have been working on and off in the Print Shop, I have been picking up bits and pieces of the history of paper, of book making, and of letterpress printing. While it is possible to appreciate the work of art that is a hand-printed and bound book without knowing any history, such knowledge gives a much greater depth to that appreciation. Even before the codex form – the “books” we know today – there was writing on stone, wax, and clay tablets. People used scrolls for a long time as well before coming to the codex form. Before “paper” arrived in Europe from China in about 1150 AD, vellum (smoothed calf or lambskin) was used for pages, while papyrus was the main material used by Mediterranean cultures. Paper took hold first in the Mediterranean, especially Egypt, and eventually worked its way north, becoming an accepted material even in northern Europe by about the fourteenth century. At this time, scribes were still writing out and illuminating their books page by page. But along with paper came the block print from China. Wood blocks or metal plates could be carved or engraved to make illustrations and even blocks of text. The blocks allowed for multiple copies of exactly the same thing to be made much more quickly, though the carving and printing process was still relatively slow and primitive. At last moveable type appears in the 1440s, a method by which letters could be put together to create a text and then taken apart and re-used, saving a little time in the creation of each page of text. Guttenberg is the man credited with the creation of a better press to make the most effective use of the idea of moveable type. By 1450 his press was in operation in Germany. The printer would take three days to get type ready and proofed, but on the fourth day he could print as many as 200 copies while in those same four days the scribe had only accomplished sixteen pages. This came at an important time in history and was used to disseminate information on religion, politics, and social commentary among other more literary endeavors. Presses became a part of everyday life in Europe and America. There were developments in the style of presses and newspapers especially caused a huge boom in the need for presses and people to work in them. The advent of electricity made the printing part of printing go even faster, but then computerization began eliminating the need for people to be a part of the printing process. Today the letterpress is kept alive in part by the presses who make photopolymer plates and people who collect the old lead type. The foundries who made the type are out of business, for the most part, and so when a letter is somehow broken or worn down too much to be used, then there is often no way to replace it. The photopolymer plates allow for the same look as the metal type, thus keeping a beautiful art relevant. It is no longer reasonable to print books and newspaper in large quantities on presses, but people often turn to letterpress for the beauty of the text pressed into the paper for things such as wedding invitations, graduation announcements, broadsides of poetry, and even publication of small books that are unlikely to be picked up by large publishing companies.
The Learning Curve
The process of creating this book has been a good representation of the liberal arts education. Not only have I become saturated with historical knowledge, but I have had to put to use skills from across the curriculum: from the mathematics needed to figure out how much paper we needed and how to cut it, to revision skills learned in poetry workshops, to concepts of design and printing techniques learned from art classes, many subjects come into play. In addition to putting my own skills to use, I learned several new ones. Even though I already knew how to set type and work the press, I became much more familiar with these motions. I no longer have to look carefully to find each letter in the type case, so the time it takes to set type is significantly reduced (though I am still nowhere near as fast as the men who once did this for a living). I can now take apart and clean the press, make adjustments to parts of it to align text correctly, and notice when it needs more ink. Certainly the only way to learn these processes is by doing: after putting over 1,000 pieces of paper through the press, I am comfortable with the exact amount of pressure it takes to roll each through and the most economical motions for getting the paper in and out. The motions of folding paper, punching holes and stitching pages is becoming familiar as we work through the stack, and my board-covering techniques have improved and sped up considerably since the very first book I made three years ago.
A Future for Letterpress
Even though most people may not understand even part of the process of book-making or know any of the history of printing, they can still appreciate that this art is a part of history as well as part of today’s world. We generally treasure and place a higher value on something that has been handmade. The knowledge that another human being has put time and effort into this book may be enough to inspire a closer look and a reflection at least on the book as a work of art, and then hopefully on the poems themselves. The best way to truly understand the work is to participate in it, but learning about it is the next best way. Even if students do not make it down to the print shop in their time at Washington College, I hope that this project has at least been able to shed a little light on such a unique and beautiful art.
Certainly if I were to do the project again, there are details I would change, but the books as they stand are perfectly in line with my vision. I think that these are indeed poems of reflection, a book of meditation. It is my hope that students will continue to use the print shop to create works of art. There is such a wonderful atmosphere for writing here that it only makes sense to turn to the letterpress to showcase the work of our most talented and motivated writers. As long as students continue to write, they should be able to publish, to get their ideas out into the larger world as I have done.
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