In this series of poems, Doireann Ní Ghríofa responds to art by Alice Maher. Nine Silences is a consideration of the embodiment of female silence, mermaids, and the monstrousness of the feminine, deepening into an exploration of the otherness of female desire and domesticity.
Designed, typeset and letterpress printed by Jamie Murphy with great assistance from Sarah O’Neill, Lorcan Rush and Lauren Shannon O’Brien at Distillers Press, NCAD, Dublin. The type is hand-set in 14 and 24 point Méridien, designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954 (this foundry type released by Deberny & Peignot, Paris, 1957). Alice Maher’s fragmented woodcut has been printed from scorched and brushed ash. The 150gsm Hodgkinson handmade paper was produced for the Stanbrook Abbey Press in 1974 and kept dry until now by John Purcell in London. The marbled paper design has been prepared by Jemma Lewis using Irish Carrageen Moss. The bindings were executed by Tom, Pat, Tommy and Patricia Duffy at their workshop in Dublin’s Five Lamps area. Printed in an edition of 80 books. Copies numbered 1 – 50 have been bound in marbled paper over boards, housed in a transparent perspex slipcase. Four similar copies marked i – iv are for collaborators. Copies lettered A – Z have been half-bound in salmon leather and marbled paper and are presented, accompanied by a folded down printing of the complete woodcut (on 120 gsm Zerkall), in a cloth covered solander box.
