High5 Press aims to provoke energetic reader interaction through innovative texts. As its proprietor, Emily Tipps uses letterpress printing, hand paper making, and an array of binding and printmaking techniques to create books whose texts are in harmony (or concerted disharmony) with their materials. High5 Press is dedicated to craftsmanship as well as to experiment.

Anything from Anywhere




In the summer of 2008, I went for a walk down to the banks of the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Underneath the old train trestle that spans the river, I unearthed several strange, abandoned objects: a license plate; a busted, rotting baseball; a huge, rusty bolt and a mysterious item that looked like a spigot head. I sent these items to each of four poets and asked them to come up with a manuscript based on the object they received. The result of their efforts are presented here, in "Anything from Anywhere". Four pamphlets, printed on handmade cotton and abaca paper I made myself, are housed in a clamshell box, covered in Canapetta book cloth. Illustrations and text were printed from photopolymer plates on a Vandercook printing press. The pamphlets can be arranged like a puzzle, so that the images on their covers fit together to form a cohesive, still life print of the group of objects. This collaboration was my effort to maintain a community of writer-friends, who have dispersed across this damned big country. It was also an effort to attach myself to my current locality, in all its strangeness. Printed in an edition of 60. $250