The Poetry Salon Broadside Series is an ekphrastic partnership between Samiya Bashir, poet and Reed College professor, and Daniela del Mar, letterpress printer and designer that ran from from 2013 to 2020. Bashir and del Mar find in each other a common vision, complementary aesthetic language, and unmatchable passion to build and sustain an interactive gift economy using language, text + image with lead, wood + cast iron—the ephemeral and the material—to communicate the spirit and sustenance of poetry.
Never to be sold for money, each print run is gifted to the reading’s attendees, one third goes to the poets themselves, and the remainder is kept as an open archive. Supported by Reed College, The Poetry Salon’s broadsides are not offered as payment for the writer’s work nor for the community’s engagement, instead, Bashir and del Mar make and share this work in a genuine spirit of craft, conversation, and gratitude.
Poetry Salon Broadside Series, 11” x 17”, 8.5” x 5.5”, 2014-2020, series of thirty-five, 2-7 color letterpress prints, lead and wood type, magnesium cuts, linoleum carvings, polymer, magnetic plates, silkscreen, risograph, indigo dye, fabric paint, mylar, and thread, and marble were used to design and produce closed broadside editions of prose and poetry in quantities of 150.
Print images by Sean McDonald. Images taken at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, Illinois for the exhibition “The Lushness of Print”, February 2019.