Another lovely few days in the legendary Whittington press with Pat Randle and Angie Butler, and coming this winter https://www.stevenjfowler.com/ppp/

A limited edition of 100, letterpress printed, original poetry sequence. The gallant errant crusading knight, and the world’s first troubadour, Guillaume IX of Poitiers visits his former comrade-in-arms Sir Richard de Croupes. In the ancient Cotswold village of Whittington, future home of the eponymous press, will Guillaume, fine dining, be able to resist the temptations of a beaked devil?

A distinctive, eccentric and playful work of literature, The Hyphen is a Dagger is a product of a unique ground-up collaborative project between printers and poets - Angie Butler, Pat Randle and SJ Fowler. Working in cahoots from scratch, this publication was made with its specific letterpress production as a constraint and guide. Using only wood-letter typefaces from the stores of the legendary Whittington press in the heart of the Cotswolds, and working to vocabularies available from the letters on hand, the poems were written by Fowler to be then edited, while being set, across a series of collaborative in press sessions over 2022 and 2023. The poems themselves relate to the the place of their making, centering around the real life crusader Sir Richard de Croupes, whose tomb adjoins the press in Whittington court. Guillaume, the hero of the story, was the first recorded troubadour. For print afficionados, the text is buffeted with labels of each typeface used, from the Delittle collection of 1888. This publication is a rare example of what is possible when contemporary writers and printers work together with simultaneous purpose.