To Ask
From How to
John Lee Clark
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Communicate: Poems
To Ask
From How to Communicate
John Lee Clark
To Ask
Copyright © by Layla Siddharth Dev
ARTD 444 Typographic Systems
Molly C. Briggs, Instructor
Spring 2024
School of Art & Design
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
John Lee Clark is an American deafblind poet, essayist, historian, and translator and an activist in the Protactile movement. His acclaimed How to Communicate: Poems, 2023 , incorporates creative reflections on the Braille slate, prose poems, and “erasures” that reinterpret nineteenth-century poems and critique the limits of the canon.
To Ask from the book How to Communicate: Poems is an original re-setting of Clark’s poem “To Ask.”
This project was inspired by the pedagogical research of book designer and doctoral student Natalie F. Smith, with whom Professor Briggs has co-taught typography in past semesters.
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To YM and DZ Look at me go I’m better now
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Foreword
This poem cut me to my soul. He crossed a line I vow never to let anyone cross again, but her forgiveness reminds me to let go of the anger that weighs me down.
I am so much more than my past, and this text is much more than words on a page. My design is a physical manifestation of my continuity. My scars will fade, but they will never disappear. Yet, I will grow beyond anything they ever will be—I have grown beyond their control.
I’m glad John Lee Clark learned to be a good husband, and I hope he will never forget again. Let this be a lesson for anyone who is becoming a bad husband.
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She was a wonderful girlfriend
She didn’t have to but she started to learn Braille
I say started because she didn’t finish
She didn’t finish because I was the worst boyfriend imaginable
She was studying the Braille book she had ordered from the Hadley School for the Blind
Braille has a simple version called Grade One and an advanced version called Grade Two and she naturally started with Grade One
She asked me about a passage
I read it and it said See Spot run
I said stupid book kiddies and tore it in half
She said hey my BOOK
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I said SEE I Is The WaS SPOT run Ing run eD duh duh and tore it into more halves
She gave Braille up and almost gave me up Almost She went on to learn Gaelic French Japanese Danish Spanish and became a pioneer in written ASL
Braille she never touched again
It took years and being kicked out and finally being separated for two years but I learned to be a good husband
During the two years I was alone I read and read and read
The ASL words Braille and Forgive are almost the same so it was like I was saying forgive me while brushing my fingers over the dots
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Forgive me forgive me forgive me
I was wrong
She did master Braille
The hardest most advanced kind
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This book was designed by Layla Dev at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
The header typeface is BC Mikser. BC stands for Briefcase Type, which is the foundry this typeface was made by.
The body text is Gill Sans. It is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British brand of the foundry Monotype.
The color is #00ffff or pure cyan.
This was printed at the Art and Design Building Digital Lab.
Selected, designed, and typeset by Layla Dev