Three Squared Cinquain S
Poem by John Lee Clark �� Designed by Sara Lin
Three Squared Cinquains
Copyright © by Sara Lin
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.
Three Squared Cinquains is an original re-setting of John Lee Clark’s poem “ Three Squared Cinquains.”
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.
Foreword
After reading the poems written by John Lee Clark, I felt inspired by his experiences as a DeafBlind man in the United States.
The poem selected for this chapbook illustrates these lived experiences. My re-setting of this poem will hopefully encapsulate his experiences of being underestimated and shocking nonDeafblind people.
Con T en
10 The Reporter Is in Awe
12 Am I a Nobody, Too?
14
One Afternoon, I Found Myself
TS
The r epor T er iS
of a DeafBlind man who cooks without burning himself!
Helen Keller is to blame.
12
in a we
Can’t I pick my nose without it being a miracle?
13
a m i a n obody,
Too?
14
I am sorry to disappoint, But I am. Yet nobody
would let me be one, not even when I catch a bus stinking of Nobodies
15
o ne aFT ernoon,
16
i Found m y S el F
Walking with my cane dragging behind me. I well knew the way. There was nothing to see. Everything saw me first and stayed in place.
17
This book was designed, set into type, printed, and bound by Sara Lin at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
The display face is FreightSans Pro, designed by Joshua Darden.
The body face is Dolly Pro, designed by Akiem Helmling, Sami Kortemäki and Bas Jacobs.