Kudzu Press began as a family passion - a hand-operated letterpress sitting on the dining room table with two styles of type at hand, both fonts 12 point Caslon, standard and italic. There was barely enough type to print a whole poem. We had to learn a new language, words like “platen” and “rollers” and “copper spaces.” And we had to learn to have plenty of good ink on hand and the solvent to clean everything. The first order of letterpress printing is to keep everything clean. I ran the press, a Kelsey from Meriden, Connecticut, but was soon joined by my son Ansel Strickland and daughter Edwina. Sometimes when I went out at night I would come back to find a newly printed poem on the table. Our first published book was Good Luck, by Johnny Coley, in 1975. We were so proud that we had it hard bound by a man in downtown Birmingham who did excellent work. After that we printed chapbooks by local poets and a collection from Ansel’s classmates at Altamont. Later we had a poetry contest which attracted so many entries it was hard to keep up. The winners were published in The Kudzu Collection. Our greatest success was with The Pond Woman (1989) by Charlotte Gafford, with a cover illustration by Amasa Smith.
Kudzu Press took a break for everybody to grow up but now comes back to life in the hands of the same Ansel Strickland and his brother John Carmichael.