Poetry by Mary Stella Edwards

Typesetting poetry by hand is the best way to close-read a poem. Every word, piece of punctuation and line-break becomes important. The process draws attention to the space between lines and at the ends of lines. The white space is invisible air on the printed page, but in a composing stick it is physical and heavy. By letterpress printing Mary Stella Edwards’ poems I learned that her poem ‘Rooms’ is just one sentence, and that the awkwardness of reading ‘The Question’ out loud makes that poem work.

The set of four poems are available to buy as a set, either from the shop at The Burton at Bideford or from me direct. All the money from sales is going to raise funds to printed a Selected Poems by Mary Stella Edwards by the end of 2026. Email me if you’d like to buy a set.