Expedition’s Blog
A compendium of projects, process notes, technical reference, and personal anecdote: welcome to Expedition's blog. These are stories about the things we make and what we think about while making them.
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Making “I Still Have Everything You Gave Me” by Naomi Shihab Nye
The grit of this poem appeals to me. I like its staunch acceptance of what’s difficult and its self-determination re: what’s worth keeping. Over the months of working with it, I’ve found myself thinking about longer arcs of legacy. Generational ones.
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26" guillotine paper cutter for sale or trade
I'm deep in shop-move planning and looking to trade out my 26” guillotine for a 23” one.
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Making a mural from a line by Lucille Clifton
The line “i continue to continue” kept ringing for me: staunch, solid, no reason needed for being. When casting about for something I could do for my community in those dire days of being afraid of each other’s breath, I got this crazy idea to paint a mural of that single line.
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Poems Not Bombs: “We Lived Happily during the War” by Ilya Kaminsky
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How Poetry Broadsides Are Made at Expedition Press
I read fast, and then I read slow, and I often set it aside for months and see what sticks with me. What surfaces when I pick it up again later. I know I’ve hit on a poem or part of a poem I want to print when it makes me feel something big and I can’t get it out of my head.
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What is a poetry broadside?
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The most complex of simplest words: "Loveable" by Raymond Antrobus
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Making "What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade" by Brad Aaron Modlin
What a poem. It makes me feel at once hopeful and sad, sweet and desolate, longing and content with not knowing. Many lines tug at me and make me cry—in a way that feels like the small child inside of me crying—because she's being seen.
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You are not you for long: Terrance Hayes poetry notecard
What good's a collaboration if I only share what I feel sure of? I took a deep breath and sent off both excerpts and got a resounding response from the entire SAL staff: You are not you for long. And goodness we aren't, are we?
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From seed to summit: No'u Revilla poetry notecard
I love the mystery and the strength it holds. The lack of translation makes a weaving happen that reminds me of how much I don't know, and can't know.
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Making “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón
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Aid to Gaza via poetry prints
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On Noticing Love & Studying It: Ross Gay poetry notecard
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Dreams young & old: Pablo Neruda poetry broadside
I feel this poem speaks from a young and an old place at the same time and I love how it holds the two together. Unapologetically. It reminds me how we are always ourselves, holding our pain and joy, our knowing and unknowing.
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Simple & unrelenting: “We Love What We Have” by Mosab Abu Toha
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Colt's Armory press SOLD
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23" Challenge Guillotine SOLD
SOLD! 23" Challenge guillotine paper cutter for sale. Asking $900. Sharp, clean, square: this small guillotine cuts big stacks of paper with ease. It's used often in a working print shop and the only reason for selling is that we're getting a bigger one!
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45" Vaggelli Board Shear SOLD
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Releasing “Apenimonodan” small print by Margaret Noodin
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Making “Thank You” by Ross Gay
While printing this piece, in the literal act of making, I had the strangest feeling that this broadside already existed. Like I found it rather than made it. I've experienced this before but I still cannot explain it.
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Finding strange comfort: Victoria Chang poetry notecard
I find a strange comfort in these lines even though I really don't know what they mean. This is what I love about poetry—it eases my need to know and cuts great swathes through my thinking.
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Graveside poetry & pie: Late Fragment by Raymond Carver
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Letterpress United: No to War
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Making “Choreography of Ruin” by Ellen Bass
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Poetry Unbound & On Being
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Making “tó” by Sherwin Bitsui
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Embracing Grief
What I’m most grateful for about the losses I’ve experienced in my life is their effect of making me suddenly, unexpectedly, excruciatingly present. The summer my older brother died I was painting a friend’s 2-story 4-bedroom house a soft pale yellow.
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June Jordan by Sabina Smith
When I first read June Jordan’s “Poem about My Rights,” it was the first day of spring break. I was sitting at a coffee shop next to Expedition Press with my friend. We saw Myrna and she invited us over. On her wall in the shop there was a copy of the poem tacked up. I still can’t fully describe how powerful it felt, so full of emotion and honestly, I’d never read anything more mesmerizing.
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On Edge
Recently I was interviewed by a 13 yr old who asked me what the hardest part of my job is. “Time!” I said immediately. “Good lord, time management. Knowing what to prioritize when.” A week prior a journalist asked me about my relationship to time as if I knew some secret about detaching from the fast-paced pressures of the digital
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Building an Art Show
A year ago, at a windy roadside stop in South Dakota with a couple flickering bars of reception, I checked my email. There was a message from the manager of a gallery in downtown Seattle. She was wondering whether I wanted to join next year?
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Making Sweet Darkness
I first read the poem “Sweet Darkness” by David Whyte on a Friday, at the end of one of the worst weeks of my life. Husband demanding separation, step daughter screaming, mother gone missing.
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Ode to Morning Pages
It’s a simple practice. Write three pages, first thing every morning, longhand. Can't imagine not writing them.
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On Propaganda & Personalizing
I watched the election results come in with increasing sickness. I went to bed early and woke up numb. The rollercoaster ride since recalls the early days after my brother died: anger, shock, despair, and overall a grand penetrating sense of pure disbelief.
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Broken Broadsides
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my voice as an artist and my role as a publisher: how they inform and whether they inhibit each other. I feel a strong insistence that I should divide these actions and define them. Then I forget.
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Design Process with Metal Type
People often gawk when I give a typesetting demo, sliding each metal letter one by one into the composing stick, tilted at an angle to keep them in line, upside down and backwards.
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Letterpress Workers 2016
I’m just back from two weeks in Italy, the first in Milan, the second at Tipoteca Italiana and then Venice. I am sitting here back in New York feeling a little sad, missing all the lovely new friends I made and knowing I won’t see them for quite some time. Oh time. But what a time!