“POETRY HAS LEFT THE POEM” BROADSIDE: PHASE TEXT

After the image was complete, the next step was to print the text over the image, so that the outlines to delaminate would already be on each print. Like the image, the text had to be printed in two sections:

[A brief aside: Some of you printers out there might be wondering why a plastic-backed photopolymer plate is mounted on a magnetic base (made for steel-backed photopolymer). Because those are the bases that we have. We do have one Boxcar base, but it’s only a 9” x 12”. We have the advantage of having two presses with adjustable beds, so the plates can easily be raised to the proper height. We have also stuck pieces of paper under the magnetic bases to raise them up on the non-adjustable presses. So those magnetic bases are still useful, even if you’ve switched entirely to plastic-backed plates.]

I first tried printing the text in opaque white, because I was afraid black or another color wouldn’t have enough contrast. I was wrong. Here’s what the white looked like:

So black again, and it worked much better: