Limited-Edition Poetry Publisher & Printer

IN ONE CORNER of the Tollund Press office, we have a 1964 Original Heidelberg Großer Tiegel (GT) letterpress. Rescued from a Pennsylvania print shop, coated in leaked oil and smelling of cheap vodka, faded bingo cards, and general regret, this piece of German precision engineering and its massive impressional power had been wasted on die cutting scratch lottery tickets and coasters. It has recently been nursed back to its former glory and returned to the ring ready to clean any poet’s proverbial clock. Its maximum heart rate is 4,000 impressions an hour, and its flailing fighting style can best be described as “death by windmill.” In its restored state, the letterpress goes by the name The Original Hilbert in honor of our initial project by the celebrated Philadelphia poet Ernest Hilbert. This crazy-looking, cast-iron cat weighs in at around 6,000 lbs.

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AAAAND IN THE OTHER CORNER, there is Christian Schoenberg. He has shocked polite society repeatedly by ordering martinis with as many as five olives but generally tends to stay sober on fight nights. A flâneur by nature, he is a physically slight enthusiast with a love for formal poetry, certain languages, and debossment. He has had a lifelong—mostly theoretical—acquaintance and fascination with offset and letterpress printing and individuals of the poetic persuasion. At one point, he even blessed the British academic world with his doctoral thesis on small presses and Joyce, Eliot, and Pound. Christian weighs in at a, by American standards, modest 185.4 lbs and is ready to set all his mind on the steep ascent into the ring.

Alright lads! Let’s keep it clean…