MPR’s Marc Sanchez presents a profile of Scott King, owner of Red Dragonfly Press in Red Wing. King creates books the old-fashioned way. He publishes poetry, usually in the form of small "chap" books. Each letter of each word is set in place by hand and then printed one page at a time.
SCOTT KING: The setting, the type, and putting the way of type, that quiet time is really nice, especially in the winter time when there is no lawnmowers. And it's the light. I don't have to have it on if it's sunny outside and it's snow on the ground. It's just naturally lit in here. And it's very much like a monastery in some ways.
That's the sound of one line of poetry. But once the presses are turned on or the caster's turned on, it's just work at that point. Nice work, but it's work. This one, the motor runs the printing system. It's printing. It's adding some other noises.
Last chapbook I printed, I did that 4,600 times.
Printing press. The type caster, though. This is elaborate and crazy.
And then you have to get all the other parts moving.
SPEAKER: It's fucking running in there.
SCOTT KING: [INAUDIBLE] here. This would be melted. And this would be underneath here. Every time that goes down, it would be making a piece of type. Mostly, what's done here is printing poetry in the form of chapbooks, mostly. Little tiny books of poetry. I'm Scott King. We're at the Red Dragonfly Press print shop at the Anderson Center, Red Wing, Minnesota.
Digitization made possible by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
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