SLIPSHEETS: created and introduced by Andrew Steeves, with an afterword by Christopher Patton

I’mfascinated by the recent SLIPSHEETS (Kentville NS: Gaspereau Press,2023), the full title of which seems to be (offering a bit more of adescription to the project) AN INCIDENTAL PRINTING OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKIN’S“PIED BEAUTY” ON SLIPSHEETS, CREATED & INTRODUCED BY Andrew Steeves, WITHAN AFTERWORD BY Christopher Patton. As Gaspereau Pressco-founder/publisher/printer Andrew Steeves writes in his introduction, “Readingthe Sheets in the Printer’s Trash Bin,” this is a project that emerged out ofprinting an edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sonnet “Pied Beauty” in the spring of 2021, requiring extra sheets between printed sheets for the sake of reducingunintentional ink transfer during the printing process. As he writes:

In order toget the large type as black as possible, I printed the book on dampenedmouldmade paper using frightening quantities of ink. This tactic worked finewhen printing the front of each sheet, but printing the back side posed somechallenges. When the back side of a dampened sheet of paper is printed (‘backedup’), some of the still-tacky ink from the front side—which is now flipped overand making direct contact with the press’s impression cylinder—inevitably transfersonto the impression cylinder wherever the type from both the front and the backsides overlap on the sheet. Over the length of a press run, the transferred ink(the ‘offset’) builds up on the cylinder’s drawsheet and causes problems; thisoffsetting must be either kept to a minimum or cleaned off. Rather than wipingthe offset ink from the drawsheet after every impression, I decided to slip aclean sheet of cheap paper under each press sheet as I printed. These slipsheetsreceived the offsetting ink and kept the cylinder clean.
            And so every stack of book sheets that I printed for myedition of “Pied Beauty” also produced a corresponding stack of soiledslipsheets carrying the bizarre rendering of the text that occurred whereverthe pressure from the back side of the form overlapped with the wet ink fromthe front side. What interests me about these slipsheets is how the imagerythey capture is an incidental expression of the poem, but not a random one. Theyare the inevitable outcome of a controlled and intentional technical process, agraphic expression of the poem refracted through the act of printing andrecorded in the project’s waste.

Thereis something fascinating about how the play with printing machinery offers ameeting point between the work of someone such as Andrew Steeves, anexperienced printer, critic, poet and editor, and the work of someone such asthe late Toronto poet bpNichol (1944-1988), who also engaged with learning howto work the presses at Coach House, often composing pieces towards what couldor shouldn’t be possible utilizing alternate printing methods. The result of Steeves’play with SLIPSHEETS has the effect of being an echo, or even a blend,of visual poetry elements utilized by visual poets such as Nichol, David Aylward,Gary Barwin and Derek Beaulieu (among multiple others, even such as ChristopherPatton, as well) and even the text-work of the late London, Ontario artist Greg Curnoe (1936-1992), playing with block text in a large format, but allowing forthe accident to see what else might be possible. It is always fascinating tosee printers play with the equipment, allowing themselves these quirky side-projectsof accident. And, whereas Steeves’ introduction offers an explanation ofprocess, ie: how we got there from here, as well as an overleaf of the printer’simposition scheme mapped “for those curious about this aspect of the process,”poet and critic Christopher Patton’s afterword, “Beauty of the Antiphon,”explores the result of these accidents, this project. As Patton writes: “Icannot shake the feeling Hopkins anticipated this setting of his poem. If notthe man, his dauntless, ecstatic eye.” He echoes the same towards the end ofhis short piece: “I cannot shake the feeling Hopkins anticipated this settingof his poem. His love for play among semblances. The antiphonal form of histhinking.” How does accident, such “waste” (as the back cover calls it) become thefocus of such an intriguing, playful translation of a poem? As Patton writes,mid-point through his piece:

            These sheets are a fortuitous translation, made for the typographicaleye, of the test he called “Pied Beauty.” They meet letterforms as he metnatural forms: attuned to their selving and their interfusion andthe non-difference of the two. (Shitou Xiqian described it as “two arrowsmeeting in mid-air.”) That they are disjecta of a printing process bent on someother product lessens them not at all. As Hopkins wrote of his own self-being,his being-in-Christ, this “joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortaldiamond, / Is immortal diamond.” Note the two turns: one on the comma after “matchwood,”one on the virgule marking the moment the verse reverses.