Letterpress Broadsheet Celebrates Poet Shane Seely's Reading at UT

Student volunteers Conner S. McDonough ( in profile on left) and Jenny Goodwin, both creative writing majors themselves, check an early proof of “Two Boys in the Woods,” a poem by visiting poet Shane Seely that they designed and printed as a letterpress broadsheet to celebrate his reading at the University of Tampa. It is the first time the TBAS has issued a limited-edition broadsheet in connection with the annual Writers at the University Series.

With the help of Carl Mario Nudi, letterpress coordinator at TBAS, Conner set the poem on a Ludlow Typograph. Jenny and Conner printed it on a Vandercook 4. Fifty copies were printed on dampened paper in two colors.

With careful attention to detail, Jenny and Conner carried out the work. Seely, whose 2009 collection The Snowbound House received the Levine Prize and was published by Anhinga Press, congratulated them on the result and signed all fifty copies. He is Senior Lecturer in English at Washington University in St. Louis. His poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Arts & Letters, Notre Dame Review, Bellingham Review, Prairie Schooner, and other journals, and on the Poetry Daily website.

In the photos below, Conner checks the inking and impression; Carl and Jenny adjust the lockup on the Vandercook.