On Sunday, April 9, Signal-Return hosted Power of the Press Fest at Detroit’s Eastern Market. The festival tied together print-makers, text and visual artists, bookbinders (including Structo alum Christine Darragh), literary journals, and small presses. It was a fun day with a serious theme underlying it: the vital connection between small independent operations, whether art or literary, to freedom of speech, expression, and press.
Structo shared a table with our friends at Versal journal and asked attendees to share a word in any language. We got a smattering from all around the world — the odd, the overly specific, the vulgar, the technical, and everything in between. Here are a few:
- Pronoi – a Greco-English neologism for the sneaking suspicion that everyone around you is wishing you well, the opposite of paranoia.
- Bly – Afrikaans for rooted.
- Sehnsucht – A German word meaning the longing for the unattainable in the face of reality.
- Phenolphthalein – A chemist stopped by and shared this favorite word. It’s Greco-Roman science-speak for C20H14O4.
- Andøva – This is my contribution, a Faroese word meaning to row against the current so that the boat stays still in position to land.
Fight the good fight for freedom of speech, expression, and the press in these difficult times. A great way to do so is to support your local presses, magazines, artists, makers, and writers.
— Matthew