Lena Okafor’s workshop is the size of a generous kitchen. Cases of metal type line one wall; a 1920s Heidelberg press takes up most of the rest. She prints small editions of poetry — rarely more than two hundred copies — and sets every line by hand.
On choosing the craft
“I came to letterpress by accident,” she told me, inking a roller. “I wanted a slower job after years in advertising. I did not expect it to change how I read.”
When every letter weighs something, you stop wasting words.
On mistakes
Setting type means reading backwards and upside down. Mistakes are inevitable, and Lena keeps a box of misprinted pages she calls the archive of humility. “Every error teaches you where your attention slipped.”
On what comes next
Her next edition is a collection of Portuguese lullabies, translated by a friend and printed on paper made from old cotton shirts. It will take eight months. She seems delighted about that.
