The Hyphen is a Dagger; Guillaume IX, troubadour crusader.

Angie Butler, Pat Randle, SJ Fowler.

Nomad Letterpress and AB Press. Due for release November 2023.

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 limited edition of 100, letterpress printed, original poetry sequence.

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.

The Printed Poetry Project

Aiming to create overlaps between poetry and letterpress, as well as publishing and book arts, I’m lucky to be the poet at the centre of this project so far, thanks to Angie Butler and Sarah Bodman.

Evolving organically over many months of correspondence, the PPP is creating a generous, generative space for real collaboration between those with the expertise to realise printed matter and those who might write the poems within.

For me personally it has been an opportunity to expand my knowledge, not only taking baby steps in the actual means and methods of letterpress and book arts, but to reflect on my poetry and how I publish my work, in the light of possibilities, and mindsets, I had encountered but not practically considered.

Supported by the Centre for Fine Print Research at UWE, Bristol, the current form of the project is really the brainchild of Angie Butler and has taken in, so far, a short residency at The Whittington press working with Pat Randle of Nomad Letterpress in May 2021.

This will be followed with a limited edition publication, entitled 25 poems, which was written during, and about, the project, before being collaboratively typeset and printed by Angie and Pat. This will be followed by an ambitious symposium in October 2021 and more happenings into the future.

Printed Poetry Project at Writers Kingston April 6, 2022

A really fun event. For the 52nd Writers Kingston event I’ve curated we had an event, on April 4th, in Kingston University’s Town House (event event event!) exploring the overlaps between poetry and letterpress, as well as literature and the object of literature. Really it was a chance for me to work again with Barrie Tullett, Angie Butler and Pat Randle, who I invited to come to Kingston and read alongside local poets and the like. People presented an amazing range of work, while I just read! Unusual. But I was reading from 25 POEMS the letterpress publication Angie, Pat and I made last year. The video below contains info waffle on that. Afterwards we went pizza express too. It was delicious. Find all performances here https://www.writerskingston.com/print

Bristol and Cheltenham (May 10th to 15th 2021) - diary

The printed poetry project kicked off with a dream-like week in Bristol in Cheltenham. It was an ideal collaborative experience, where the workings - the writing of poems, some teaching, some online eventing, some letterpressing, some learning - became embedded in a context of hospitality and conversation. All of this was entirely facilitated by Angie Butler. Her skill in curating the week was ever evident, and her generosity was constant.

All told we had two days at the Whittington Press in Cheltenham, a day free for writing and day of teaching at UWE. The experience at the press was something I’ll never forget. The Whittington Press has, since 1971, been printing books by letterpress and it is just a brilliant place of work, of history, held in great esteem in its field with evident and good reason. The chance was given to me to witness it in a unique role, as a poet writing something of the place, about the place, towards obliquely capturing what John Randle and Pat Randle have done there for decades. These hours really fed my understanding of what was possible in this project, and in printing in general. For I have always sought the content, while labouring to others how important the context is, of poetry, without yet taking recourse to the possibility of the book, the physical page, the type, the machinery, and the history of that. Moreover, the exceptional talent of Pat Randle, of Nomad Letterpress, was matched by his amenability and kindness. I felt, over these days, friendships began. This isn’t always the case, but it doesn’t half increase the freedom of creative collaboration, allowing accidents to be celebrating and deference to speed into original thinking.

The process then was a whirl. The evenings in my airbnb, doing long runs through Bristolian suburbs, the sharing of ideas with Sarah Bodman and the the postgraduate students at UWE, and the conversations with Angie, both for an online event and in her motorcar - these all fed into the poems I wrote, that were to be finished in this week so they could be printed there and then! We found an old cast in the press that said ‘25 poems’, next to an image of a cock and bull, and i leapt on this as the title. So 25 poems. A perfect chance for me to exorcise a desire to write one word poems I thought, following Aram Saroyan and 16 were created, for the opening and closes pages. Then notes, fragments, overheard conversations, things I thought when I was not thinking, these began coming together for the remaining 9 poems - with a sense always of the vernacular of letterpress and printing, of the terminology, the vocabulary, the intense sense of workable knowledge.

By the last day, Angie and Pat were typesetting the poems, we were discussing the various types for each poem, Caslon, Gill Sans, Perpetua and the like, and then seeing my poems, upside down and in reverse, in lead laid out before us. Printing continued after I left, and I was let off with the labour really, being too much of a novice to be of any use. The result will be released later in the year, after much careful work by Angie. What a privilege to have my poems cared for thus.

Again, a thanks to Angie. Her active efforts to make everything easy for me, and to make a space between poetry and letterpress which I doubt has ever existed in this way, was matched by the sincerity and hospitality of Pat Randle, who essentially let me, a stranger, into his place of work, his second home by all accounts, just on the word of Angie and gave me every possible benefit of the doubt. The publication will bear our three names upon it together and this fills me with satisfaction, for the publication will not only be a beautiful thing, but it will be a symbol of a similarly brilliant process and time.