Morning detritus on the stone after a late night printing (& whoa is 11pm late when you have a 7 month old 😳) #process #letterpress #printing
Type locked up is the word BREATHE in 14pt Standard medium. Don’t even ask how many tries it took me to get it right. The irony wore out early! But I am satisfied that I dug in and learned new skills on my very rad still-new-to-me Heidelberg Windmill press.
Good words on press by Luke Brekke rn—restrike feeling esp appropriate these darkening days. #readwhileyoucan #letterpressprinting #poetry #heidelbergwindmill
Inking up a new display for the #portlandbookfestival tomorrow! If you know me, you know I’m not big on wood type, but gosh is big wood type beautiful inked up solid and doing just what it was made to do—announce a few important words from afar. And what’s more important than letters? (“Press” up next—bc “letterpress” is too long to fit on one 12x18” sheet in this very fabulous 45min condensed gothic wood type gifted to us by Susan Johnston. Who, when I tried to pay for it, said “I like the messaging you’re putting out. I want this type used for that kind of work! Please continue.” & continue we do. With immense gratitude.
#woodtype #printshop #blackink #printcommunity #letter
Today is the deadline to submit poems to our broadside contest! It closes tonight at 11:59 PT. Submit now or forever hold your peace (till next year ;)
www.expedition.press/contest
HUGE THANKS to everyone who has submitted and shared! Over the next few months, myself and a few readers from the Expedition community will read all the contest entries blind and rank them. After the new year I will make the final selection, announce the winning poem, and get to work on its broadside, which I plan to produce in spring 2026.
Yours in poetry & print,
Myrna
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Pictured: Admit Constraints notecard sitting on a bookshelf.
#broadsidecontest #poetrysubmissions #submitpoetry #admitconstraints
Torso of Air (by Ocean Vuong)
Suppose you do change your life.
& the body is more than
a portion of night — sealed
with bruises. Suppose you woke
& found your shadow replaced
by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful
& gone. So you take the knife to the wall
instead. You carve & carve
until a coin of light appears
& you get to look in, at last,
on happiness. The eye
staring back from the other side —
waiting.
From Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Copper Canyon Press (@copper_canyon_press ). Copyright 2016 Ocean Vuong.
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On selecting this text (by Myrna):
I read Ocean's first book of poetry very quickly. In one sitting, in the old comfy chair in my old shop in Kingston, stopping to cry many times. Including when I hit the word "happiness" in this poem, and then again that last word. Waiting. Besides being hit hard emotionally, I was fascinated by the line breaks and how they slowed my reading, and I knew the ampersands would be especially beautiful printed from Perpetua set in metal. Also this poem is a really great length for a broadside — 13 lines, giving a lot of flexibility to the format. Finally, Rilke was my first great poetry love and so the echo and honoring and answer back that this poem is, the way it carries the conversation forward, pleased and pleases me greatly.
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If you’re a poet reading this, we’d love to read your writing too! Expedition Press is open for submissions until Oct 31 for our broadside contest: www.expedition.press/contest.
#torsoofair #oceanvuong #nightskywithexitwounds #readpoetry #poetrybroadside #poetryprint #expeditionpress #broadsidecontest
This is the type form for Chen Chen's "Remember the Earth" notecard: 14pt Venus Med with the first line in 16pt Venus Med extended and the author's name in 6pt Univers.
#metaltype #letterpressprinting #handsettype #poetry #printingpoetry #chenchen #remembertheearth
What do you remember about the earth?
If we could communicate fully, there would be no need to communicate. If we could love perfectly, there would be no need to love. If we could finish grieving, there would be no need to live. If we could touch completely, there would be no need.
—Chen Chen
After Bhanu Kapil, from "a small book of questions: chapter iv,” Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, BOA Editions Ltd (@boaeditions ).
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On selecting this text (by Myrna):
First I have to say the title of the book this is from is one of my favorite book titles ever: Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency. It is so funny and terribly true feeling; absurd, right? As all the days we're in! There's a lot that makes me laugh while also wrenching my gut in Chen's work — so much to cringe about described with such accuracy and often tongue in cheek. The series of questions this excerpt comes from is in the middle of the book and it caught me, stilled me. It doesn't feel representative of the whole and I wondered at that for a bit, as I read and reread the book. Excerpting is a tricky thing and especially with poetry, especially when you are putting that excerpt on its own small page far away from the the context it came to you in. But still. These lines made me cry. They made me feel a big weight, and they gave me permission to that feeling. And so I asked if I could print them — because that's always what I'm looking for, those few words that make me feel so much. That's what I want to share, and I hope they elicit big enough feelings in others that they will take the time to find the credit line (always detailed on the back of Expedition prints!) and follow those bread crumbs back to the heart of the work the words came from.
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If you’re a poet reading this, we’d love to read your writing too! Expedition Press is open for submissions until Oct 31 for our broadside contest: www.expedition.press/contest.
#remembertheearth #chenchen #boaeditions #readpoetry #poetrybroadside #poetryprint #expeditionpress #broadsidecontest
One week left to submit to our broadside contest! We’re looking for poems of any style, that elicit big feeling in few lines (25 lines or less ;) www.expedition.press/contest
Pictured is the flyer we made for fabulous poetry lovin’ bookstores @grolierpoetry , @woodlandpattern , and Seattle’s own @openpoetrybooks (thank you all for helping spread the word!). To the left is our Heidelberg Windmill printing press, with some of our poetry collection above it. To the right is inventory ready to ship and cut paper ready to be printed. Still getting the hang of our workflows in this new shop, but it’s sweet to feel it settling in slowly.
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#broadsidecontest #printshop #letterpressprinting #poetrybooks #poetrybroadsides #expeditionpress
Sometimes I feel fast.
Sometimes I am so slow. Always
I win the wound they hang on my chest.
—Natalie Diaz
From “Like Church,” Postcolonial Love Poem, Graywolf Press (@graywolfpress ). Used by permission.
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On selecting this text (by Myrna):
This print was part of a series dubbed "Broken Broadsides," which featured lines from as-yet-unpublished poems that authors sent me with approval to play around with typographically. From here I think of them as quick sketches, studies toward making sense of my own reading. This idea of racing toward others' expectations and being awarded wounds really punched me in the gut the first time I read these lines, and still does. Fast, slow. Slow, fast. Still working toward traveling at my own pace.
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If you’re a poet reading this, we’d love to read your writing too! Expedition Press is open for submissions until Oct 31 for our broadside contest: www.expedition.press/contest.
#fastslow #nataliediaz #likechurch #readpoetry #poetrybroadside #poetryprint #expeditionpress #broadsidecontest
This is the type form for the Wild & Kind notecard: 14pt Standard Medium, set justified, with the author's name in Perpetua small caps.
#metaltype #letterpressprinting #handsettype #poetry #printingpoetry #anismojgani #wildandkind
It is possible to be wild and kind at the same time. It is possible to be both alone and be loved. I have known this to be true. In others. In me. To be loved. And to also still be alone.
—Anis Mojgani
From “Sisyphus” by Anis Mojgani, In the Pockets of Small Gods, Write Bloody (@writebloodypublishing ). Copyright 2018 Anis Mojgani.
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On selecting this text (by Myrna):
My copy of Anis' book In the Pockets of Small Gods is dogeared and marked up — many lines and phrases are underlined. I had a hard time choosing which text for this project (in fact I printed a companion notecard to this one with another line from the same poem "Goat of my heart, everything in me you eat.") But this excerpt, which I refer to as "Wild & Kind," gnawed on me with its simplicity, and the plodding irrefutable way it holds such heart wrenching contradiction. I once heard the definition of maturity as the "increasing capacity to hold contradiction." I think that's true, and these lines help me.
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If you’re a poet reading this, we’d love to read your writing too! Expedition Press is open for submissions until Oct 31 for our broadside contest: www.expedition.press/contest.
#wildandkind #anismojgani #inthepocketsofsmallgods #readpoetry #poetrybroadside #poetryprint #expeditionpress #broadsidecontest
