The Response Handwriting Project:

Response: The convergence of poetry, handwriting and epistolary correspondence, is a collaborative literary art project, offered as a reaction to the slow disappearance of the handwritten mark, posted letters and books.

Originating with a fascination for the way life becomes art, Niki Neems, owner of r.s.v.p., has instigated a series of letterpress note cards featuring handwritten work by poets and writers.

Niki makes a list of poets and writers whose work she’s admired and by which she’s been inspired and then works to find snail mail addresses for the authors.  In a letter she invites them to hand copy a small original poem (or excerpt) onto a 3 ½ by 5-inch card and return it via the US Mail. As each poem makes its way back she culls the group into a cohesive whole and with the assistance of letterpress artists, Sara Sauers of Catstep Press and Susie Gelbron of formerly Carrot & Stick Press, she creates a small correspondence card featuring the handwritten poem on the front and a typed translation on the back. The finished pieces are sold at Niki’s stationery shop in Iowa City with the intent of enriching and extending both the epistolary and literary worlds.

It is hoped that the Response pieces function as reminders of a humanness that is slowly disappearing from our world. While every computer ‘click’ is trackable by the likes of Google, in many ways we are becoming disconnected, or perhaps insulated, from the world around us. Handwritten work, regardless the form it takes, keep us in touch, not only idiomatically, but also literally. Looking at handwriting, the realization is made, either consciously or not, that a person touched what is being viewed.  The same holds true of letters, their function being to allay the very distance upon which they rely, to bring someone closer. And poetry by its very nature encourages a different sort of attention. All these things slow us down.