Fragments of Spring

In 2023, I was hopeful. Queer acceptance was on the rise and, at least in my corner of the world, transitioning and being publicly non-binary was increasingly seen as normal. It was clear that random people on the street wanted to say the right thing — even if they weren’t quite sure what that was.

Fragments of Spring, my first chapbook, was born out of this optimism. A celebration of transition, it gives weight to the idea that death offers the mulch needed for life. The seventh section of the poetic sequence explores the feeling of coming into oneself, moving from the winter of uncertainty and into a renewal; a spring.

Death is illusionary, simplistic.

       From corpse, composte:

from winter, spring.

        The worn lines of age fine furrows for sowing.

In their usefulness our realization,

       regeneration.

While writing the poems featured in the chapbook, the world began to change. Politics increasingly worried me; the rise of Trump, and with him restricted speech, fascistic immigration policies, and disdain for trans visibility blotted out much of the joy I found in the project.

Nevertheless, I continued.

Balancing part-time employment and full-time studies at UC Berkeley meant only a fraction of my time could be devoted to production. This resulted in a six-month period during which I handset my poems in metal type at the CODEX Foundation. In total, production spanned the course of a year: typesetting took place in the fall, printing followed in the spring, and binding much later.

Next, printing on Strathmoore 500 series paper, I combined poetry with illustrations by Rune de León, printed from photopolymer plates, an accompanying visual sequence of strawberries moving from fruit to seed and back again.

Finally, the work was done. And as it wrapped, the election occurred, and reaffirmed my fears that the normalcy of my transition would be, at least somewhat, undone. This protracted the completion of the chapbook, as I wondered the degree to which I still agreed with the words I had written.

Not until 2025 did I first bind copies of Fragments of Spring, and only at the request of a friend. My chapbook certainly speaks to a beforetime, but nevertheless, I have returned to it on occasion. These days, I’m finding hope in refusing to change. Every day that we go out into the world without compromising ourselves, we sow seeds that, I hope, will grow into something greater.

It is in this refusal and the subsequent danger of public nonconformity that I show this work. Today it is less a celebration; more a seed of hope.

Colophon

A celebration of transition, the text for FRAGMENTS OF SPRING was dreamt, written, and composed by Sam Duffy. The poem is set in Joanna 14-pt., with titles in Bernhard Tango 18-pt. Original illustrations by Rune de Leon were scanned, becoming polymer plates of strawberry.

The poem is wrapped in Rives BFK with an eco-print of strawberry. Production was completed between the early autumn of 2023 and summer of 2024 at The CODEX Foundation. Special thank you to Inge Bruggeman, Dina Pollack, and Leonard Seastone.

An edition of twenty copies.

Availability

A limited number of early copies of Fragments of Spring exist. These copies feature minor inking variation across portions of the text and available upon request.