New chapbook from phafours

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Poetry starts with a concept. Such as, Did you know, you can use a pasta machine to make a letterpress?

So after a few years of watching for one, I get a pasta machine for $3 or $4 at a thrift store. Now I just need content. That purrs at the back of my head for a few months. I go to a conference and hear poems I like from people I like. 

Suddenly there is a call going out and tree parts in my living room.


I'll get back to that.

Incidentally, apparently, calls solicited to people in particular works far better than general calls — I got half responding and most of that half agreeing to send me a few monoku to consider. 

Monoku? It is a sub-sub-set of minimalist poetry. These one-line haiku have their own quirks and strengths. A tension, two possible readings, based on where you infer the unmarked caesura. 

Selecting poems and selecting poems that chime off each other are different beasts. 

Much shuffling and intuitive selection ensues, and we have a chapbook draft. Need bios and so on.

Teaser! I have poems from:

  • Antoinette Cheung
  • Chuck Brickley
  • Claudia Coutu Radmore
  • Dorothy Mahoney
  • Ellen Cooper
  • Hifsa Ashraf
  • Jim Kacian
  • kjmunro
  • LeRoy Gorman
  • Marshall Hryciuk
  • Maxianne Berger
  • Michael Dylan Welch
  • Michael Dudley
  • Mike Montreuil
  • Pamela Cooper
  • Roland Packer

I looked at materials, sketching designs, doing mock ups with various paper, gel pads, inks and papers, considering different chapbook sizes and orientation. Do I want to use paint? Silver card stock covers? I try out a few variations. 

I'd like the title text to be wood-block printed or rubber stamped but can't lay my hands on what clever place I put my letter stamp sets. At risk of overelaborating I realize but one must enjoy the plans, the process not only product. 

It seems a pasta machine needs a certain finesse or else the inked leaf in it slips and double prints, or presses so hard, I push the chlorophyll out of the veins. Which admittedly adds a pleasant ambiance, scent wise. I may get back to this for play but what I want is expediency to create each one unique. 




Plan B. Again, playing with leaves as I had with poems. Next, ink pads, and gel pads for mono prints. And something to press. Leaves, single leaf per each seems fitting with the idea of one and for haiku-related. Simple is elegance. Or can be. 

Each leaf has properties. Catnip makes a lovely print but is one-press then useless. A poplar leaf absorbs ink like mad, and needs a few passes before it will print. Chestnut, basswood, pear work alright. A grape leaf young enough to fit the ink pad is too delicate. Whatever weeds that was falls apart. And since I don't know what it is, may be an allergen-risk. 

Beech leaves work, if you work quickly but they dry and crumble quickly. The wax inherent in an aspen leaf, with its strong veins, means it resists ink absorption and is tougher. It ended up holding up and printing most reliably.




I used for a stamp from my aunt, inherited in the early 80s, to press. A stamped from primary school. A bone press from a decade or so ago. End cuts from other printing projects. (See hoarding is not for nothing. Materials get used.)








Want to see the final result? 

Mono will be at the phafours table at the Glebe Community Centre, and I'll post the chapbook process at phafours. 

Paper copies will be for sale, and digitally yours will have pdfs, probably before the fair, but certainly not long after.