THE MARKER COMMITTEE BY LYDIA KENNAWAY
The Marker Committee is a collection of poems exploring the ephemerality of the written word and our compulsion to leave our mark. Inspired by the American committee of the same name, which sought to create signs for places no longer fit for human habitation, the poems consider what happens when communication falters, fragments, or fails.
The opening poem is directly inspired by the committee, and the closing poem is a version of the same in which we have taken a hammer and nail to the type itself (which will later be recast for future works) to embody the breakdown of communication. Every poem is inspired by different ways of thinking abut printing, from letterpress to dot matrix to linocut.
At the centre of the book is a poem recounting the remarkable story of the Doves Press. Its founders, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, set out to create the most beautiful books known to man, but their partnership ended in conflict. Rather than allow the type to pass to Walker after his death, Cobden-Sanderson secretly cast it into the River Thames from Hammersmith Bridge. The final letters of this poem have been printed using original Doves type mudlarker from one of the largest surviving collections: type that lay beneath the murky waters of the Thames for over a century before being recovered.
Printed at Thin Ice Press: the York Centre for Print in an edition of 100 copies available at £80, and broadsides of ‘Doves’ available for £50. Please contact thinicepress@york.ac.uk with any questions.