Composing Stick meets Keyboard

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May 19, 7:07 PM

by Brenda Carl, Baltimore Media Examiner

 

 

                                              -from Emma's Sovich's blog , December 5, 2007

Words come alive in Emma's world.  A writer, and artist, Emma Sovich uses words to paint a landscape that invites you in.  And keeps you in.  Words to her are like bricks to a builder. Embracing her passion has paid off;  a natural born writer, Emma's passion could some day pay the bills.

The 22-year-old Towson writer has 67 thousand dollars in her pocket today, winning a prestigious literary award at her college graduation over the weekend.  She's found a way to weave together her love of the oldest printing techniques, with the latest digital technology,  producing award-winning works , taking home the BIG PRIZE! 

Emma Sovich won the Sophie Kerr Prize, awarded at the end of each year to the Washington College senior judged to be the best writer.  The Towson High School graduate uses all forms of communication to get her point across.  Poetry, blogging on the Internet, and even the composing stick are employed by Emma.  She has a blog:    www.thecomposingstick.blogspot.com 

Had to Google "composing stick" today and found out its an old style mechanical device invented by Gutenberg, but still around today. And some colleges actually have courses that teach the old world composing techniques, and still use the old style type.  Read Emma's blog to learn more about the lure of old letters...and how she uses them to create books today.

Good writers are good readers, and Emma describes her love of the smell of a new book.  I don't know about you, but whens the last time any young person has described a (positive) smell to you,  or talked about the thrill of cracking open a brand new book.  Emma not only loves words, reading, and writing, but has found all ways to do it.  She blogs,   she writes poetry, and also uses the oldest way the world knows to publish the written word.  The composing stick.  The ultimate in mass media, a narrative that reaches across the ages,  in forms that bring both ends of the spectrum together. Gutenberg, meet the World Wide Web.  Emma brings both worlds into one.

Desktop publishing makes it seem so easy to choose your font, your text size, paragraph indentation, etc. All the writer needs to do is provide the words in the right order. But using the composing stick and printing press, a writer feels the type, holds the letters in their fingers, and smells the metal, allowing it to absorb their body heat and change from cold to warm.

Writers who use touch,  fully experience the process of transforming thoughts into words, and words into sentences, sentences into print, print into books.  No easy task, but one embraced by Emma.  Congratulations Emma, we'll be reading more of you in the future.

More of her blog, a woman, a girl, a female, writing about the mechanical aspects of the printing press and how it helps her creativity:

 "...I often have to stay up past exhaustion to reach that state when I am trying to write. When I make jewelry, throw, or paint, I reach it through the physical, tactile efforts that each of those crafts require. Printing seems to me to be an integral part of the craft of letterpress because it allows me to feel the way I do when I finally let go and write, even though technically, the creative part has just about finished. Sometimes I'm not even involved in the creative process, when I just print a pre-designed form, yet I still get that feeling, that state. The reason, I haven't yet figured out. I guess I'll have to print more."

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