The Weeds Grow Anyway
Available for pre-order now! Get Your copy today!
Nico Wilkinson's debut full-length poetry collection "The Weeds Grow Anyway" is a celebration of that which lies beyond resilience in the face of adversity: audacity. Writing from Colorado Springs amidst a time of anti-trans violence, they examine the relationship of trans people to this world through the lens of nature's relationship to humans. What makes a plant into a weed, something deemed unacceptable to the landscape? The poetry within - much like the local flora and trans people who live there - is rooted in the experience of queering the inhospitable landscape that is Colorado Springs.
This limited first edition is handmade by the author.
Each copy is a handmade work of art, featuring over 80 pages of poetry, enclosed in a one-of-a-kind cover, designed and printed by Nico using risograph and linocut relief printing techniques, printed on a Vandercook printing press. Each copy is then bound by the author using a perfect binding machine. Read on to learn about the making of this edition.
![The Weeds Grow Anyway [Please Read Description]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/586b3bac579fb3ccd8aa1deb/1718749097479-1WZWAWZTTU11NESP6VLW/PXL_20240615_191756929.jpg)
The Making of The Book
(As of June 2024)
In May 2023 I started assembling the manuscript for The Weeds Grow Anyway. I initially planned on sending it out to publishers, but I wanted to make a single hardcover copy first, so I could visualize the book as a real, physical object.
In the process of making the hardcover book, I remembered my love of book-making. I’d printed and published anthologies previously through Prickly Pear Printing, namely We Grow Anyway: An Anthology of Queer Love, Joy, and Growth (which the title of my book is a reference to). In reflecting on the experience, I decided I wanted to make and bind my poetry collection as well. I loved the idea of crafting each book as a handmade gift to the people who had supported my poetry over the years. The community I’d found through poetry felt so personal, and I wanted each book to feel the same.
In early 2024, I started redesigning the cover as a linocut relief printing design and planning how I wanted to go about printing it. It is then that the community of printers I’d come to know offered their support. Ladyfingers Letterpress offered their risograph machines for printing the yellow layer, and The Press at Colorado College offered me a printing residency so I could print the linocut layers using their printing presses. As of mid-June, 2024, all of the book covers are printed.
In the following months, I’ll be finishing up the process of editing and formatting the manuscript. Once the manuscript is complete, I’ll print out all the insides and start binding the books in my home using my perfect binding machine. Stay tuned for a release show and more show dates to come as I book my tour.
If you facilitate a venue, book store, open mic, class, or any space in which you’d like me to perform my work and share the poetry within this book, please, contact me. I’d love to work with you!
