Issue 14: Printing is in my blood
Welcome back everyone and thank you for being here on this journey with me. I am hoping that BackerKit will approve my campaign ASAP since it is in a review at the moment, and that I will be able to launch tomorrow! There is a risk they will approve me for next Tuesday since they said they think campaigns should begin on Tuesdays, so there will be a quick update if that happens.
In the meantime, please enjoy this excerpt from the "Story" part of my upcoming BackerKit campaign to fund my journey to print my art, comics, poems, and stories locally at Pickwick Independent Press.
How it all began
In September 2023 I sat on a stool beside a table full of prints of all types and themes and inks and colors. Next to me were two other people there at the Pickwick Independent Press, for an educational orientation about how to become a press member. The room was filled with letterpress equipment, big tables full of prints of all kinds, a colorfully stained sink that had taken a beating over the years. The counter was decorated with a dusty coffeepot and a sign that had the wifi password.
Across from me sat two founders and fundamental printers at Pickwick, there to teach us about what it means to print at Pickwick and to be a member there. One of them asked us, "What is your personal history with printing?"
When it was my turn to share with our instructors, I found that I had a lot more to say about printing than I had ever imagined I would. I had forgotten somehow that my grandfather was a printer, until that very moment. I had forgotten that my ex-husband knew screen-printing, but now the memories of carrying those screens around for years from apartment to apartment, came back to me in that moment. I remembered what my father had said about working in a printing press that doubled as a bicycle repair shop when he was young. It turned out that in that moment, I realized I have quite a history with printing, though I have never myself been a printer.
I went home and applied to Pickwick as fast as I could. My fierce curiosity had to be sated. I began to dig into my paternal history. There was my grandfather Joel Poley, an artist and once a printer in California. There was my great-grandfather Wendell Poley, a printer in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Then I discovered that my great-great-grandfather, Harry Poley, had been a printer in Berlin, New Hampshire as far back as the early 1930s almost a hundred years ago. Wendell had cut his teeth on the printing presses in Berlin with his father Harry before he moved to Massachusetts. All this time, I thought, and it's been in my blood and I never knew it.
Grandpa Joel
I lost my grandfather Joel Poley during the pandemic, when there was no time for memorials. There was no room for the kind of close grief that you want to feel with your family, there was no chance to say good-bye. There was no funeral, because my grandfather's burial place is here in Maine and so will the memorial service be this summer, and his passing place was California. I look back and I wish with all of my heart that I had discovered this part of my own family history sooner. I look back and I wish that I had answered the phone when Grandpa Joel called me, and I thought, "I'm in the middle of something." Maybe we could have talked about printing. Maybe I could have told him with honesty and hope who I am, my full identity, and he would have loved me without bigotry. Maybe I could have talked to him about divorce. I don't know. That is all in the past now.
But here I am, and printing is in my blood. I did know Grandpa Joel a little, and he was kind to me and taught me how to draw and paint. He reached out to me and wanted to be a part of my life. A painting of his that he made just for me hangs on my living room wall.
Some part of me wants to be a printer because he was, too. Because his father Wendell was, and his grandfather Harry was. I bet they never predicted that their queer descendants would want to print feminist, anti-capitalist, divorce poetry. I think that's another exciting part of this, though. I am taking my surname and my family history and I am making it my own, too.
Throughout the campaign I will be doing some fun exclusive BackerKit-only things to include for you, my wonderful audience, in my printing journey. A few of these things are:
Process videos to show how I create and print
Live streams for Q&A with me
Polls to choose which art and poems should be printed
So please join me on BackerKit because every email that signs up, makes a difference to my campaign.
My world
I'm still on that writing job grind, applying and seeking out opportunities and trying to sell my art online also. And of course trying to keep room for house chores and creativity at the same time.
I did get to go on a fun podcast that my poetry friend Liz runs, called "Potlucky Podcast" which is about legal cannabis use in Maine. Liz gave me time to share my experience with cannabis, read my poetry, and talk about my writing career so that was really awesome. If you give it a listen, I hope you enjoy the three poems I read on the podcast!
Thank you again for being on this journey with me, it means a lot.
Much love to you,
Coco