The Lushness of Print: Samiya Bashir & Letra Chueca Press

In a world saturated by digital media, The Lushness of Print revisits the beauty of the printed word. The Lushness of Print presents the ekphrastic partnership between poet Samiya Bashir and printer Daniela del Mar. Bashir is a professor at Reed College, where she founded the Poetry Salon, a series which hosts visiting writers for collaborative poetry making and conversation. Del Mar co-founded Letra Chueca Press, a Latinx- and womxn-owned operation which uses traditional machines and techniques to empower underrepresented communities and identities, with Camila Araya.

Together with Bashir, they commemorate Poetry Salon readings with limited-edition broadsides, commemorative art prints of poems, that are representative rather than illustrative. The broadsides utilize typesetting and hand-carving techniques—each sheet is fed by hand and printed on century-old presses; central to this labor- and time-intensive process is the rejection of the commodification of literature and art. Bashir and del Mar make and offer this work as a bestowal, not trade. The entire run of broadsides will be on display in addition to other work by the press.