Nomad Letterpress

Guillaume XI

A distinctive, eccentric, playful work of literature, The Hyphen is a Dagger; Guillaume XI is the outcome of a collaborative project between printers and poets Angie Butler, Pat Randle and SJ Fowler. This publication was printed from a collection of recently acquired wood-letter type, using the letterpress process as both constraint and guide. Working to vocabularies and sorts available to hand, the poems were written by Fowler to be then edited, whilst being set, across a series of collaborative on-press sessions over 2022 and 2023.

The poems themselves relate to the place of their making, centring around the real-life crusader Sir Richard de Croupes, whose tomb adjoins the press at St Bartholomew’s Church. Guillaume, the hero of the story, was the first recorded troubadour.