Lyric Printing: A Demonstration and Conversation

Join Yale printing experts in a discussion of poetry, materiality, and design through a printing demonstration of Jacob Romm’s bespoke printing of lyrics by Michael Field. 

• Jacob Romm is a doctoral student in Yale’s joint program between Comparative Literature and Early Modern Studies. His research interests include trans and queer histories of the early modern period, cultural and literary exchanges between Jewish and Christian communities, and the history of the printed book. Jacob translates from French, Yiddish, and Hebrew and is currently translating the Yiddish poet Menke Katz as a Yiddish Book Center fellow.  He is the owner-printer of Letter and Spirit Press in New Haven.
• Monica Ong is a visual poet and the author of Silent Anatomies (2015), winner of the Kore Press First Book Award in poetry.  She is the founder of Proxima Vera, a micropress specializing in fine press visual poetry editions and literary art objects. As Yale Library’s senior digital designer, she designed the display materials for “Lyric Thinking” Yale Library’s 2022-23 Model Research Collection.
• Jesse Marsolais is a letterpress printer and letter carver.

The Model Research Collection is a faculty-curated collection in Bass Library selected and displayed annually to demonstrate to students how a researcher’s process of investigating a particular topic may be expressed through a collection of books and other materials drawn from across Yale Library.  “Lyric Thinking” explores how thinking through and with lyric poems takes place across diverse languages, communities, and spaces throughout the historical record.