"Two years ago, we went to Madrid for a weekend. On Sunday afternoon we went to a flea market and there I found a near-complete set of zinc stencil letters. Graphic designers have been using them for years; they suggest integrity and speed and informality. [But] stencil lettering is such a massive cliché. I wanted to be able to turn this around. So I bought them ... I realised that if you turned them over they would be the right way round to print, and they could be constrained in the furniture of the press ... I decided to print my poem 'Dear Judas' in stencil. The margins on the stencils and their limited number demanded that the poem be printed one letter at a time. Multiplied by 50 to gain the edition, and twice for the book to be dos-à-dos (which means it's a double book but turns in on itself, which I liked, a very Celtic thing), and that multiplied by the number of letters in the poem called for the cranking of my one-ton FAG proofer-over 66,000 times. For the poem only."--Ken Campbell, from The word returned.
Subject Terms:
Life. | Death. | Artists' books -- Great Britain. | Campbell, Ken -- Publisher.
Form/Genre:
Artists' books -- England -- 1996. | Dos-à-dos bindings (Binding)