In
conjunction with the annual Brattleboro
Literary Festival, Dede Cummings offers three poetry broadsides
for sale. Dede Cummings, a Brattleboro-based
book designer (and marketing director for the Dianich Gallery),
began her printing career at Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend,
Washington, as an apprentice under Sam Hammill and Tree Swenson,
moving next to The Seal Press in Seattle as a printer. She
then got an internship at the Boston publisher, David R. Godine,
and printed small jobs at Godine’s letterpress in Milton,
Massachusetts. Following her work at Godine, she relocated
to Western Massachusetts and printed for Michael McCurdy’s
Penmaen Press. The book she printed, Mundo a Solas (World
Alone) was the first English edition by the late Spanish Nobel
Prize-winning poet [1977], this bilingual edition is illustrated
with original wood engravings by Michael McCurdy. Cummings
printed a two-color edition of 1,000 copies and the book won
the New England Book Award’s Best of Show prize for
design, typography, and printing. Cummings prints private,
limited edition poetry broadsides at the Great River Arts
Institute’s letterpress in Bellows Falls and she also
teaches Book Arts for GRAI. Most recently she collaborated
with artist, Michael
Oatman on the letterpress, limited edition show poster
for “Model Citizens.”
Her design, typesetting, and printing of Galway Kinnell’s
poem entitled “Blackberry Eating” was recently
completed in an edition of 30 broadsides that have been illustrated
by Vermont artist Myles Danaher (there are 24 broadsides left
in this edition). Cummings and Danaher, along with
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