FOCUS ON NEW MEDIA #2

Editor Carl Sesar speaks about One Shot Press, his rubber-stamp press...with a unique way of presenting poetry

Carl Sesar, translator and founder of One Shot Press in Florence, Massachusetts, has created handmade, rubber-stamp books for decades. While the rubber-stamp press is nothing new – and, if anything, the oldest type of book publishing method around – one of his methods for displaying his wares is attention-catching. It also goes right to the heart of the visuality of the Chinese and Japanese poetry Sesar works with.

The "slide book," which is just that: a series of a dozen-odd slides with poems and accompanying images printed on them, and projected "for audiences to enjoy while silently sitting together reading in the dark," said Sesar.

From Sesar’s artist’s statement on rubber-stamp printing and the "slide book":

It’s been said of the T’ang dynasty Chinese poet-painter Wang Wei (699-760) that "in his poems there are paintings, and in his paintings, poems." More than a thousand years later a young Japanese poet, Ishikawa Takuboku (1885-1912), revolutionised the ancient tanka form by changing the look of the poem on the page. In translating these two poets, I have tried to carry over the visual quality of their texts along with the thoughts and feelings they express.
Along with being printed on the page, the work of both poets – and Sesar’s own work, from his book Hey – is placed in slide books and presented.

For information on One Shot Press, or to order print and slide books:

One Shot Press
P.O. Box 60575
Florence, MA 01062

Note: a One Shot Press web site is in the works; check back for details.