a year in the making

first access to poetry prints

just under a year ago–april 21, 2024, to be exact–i reached out to designer amanda brown to ask what she thought about collabing with me on prints.

at that point, i hadn’t released a poetry collection in over a year, and was having a lot of mixed feelings about my career as a poet.

i love poetry books (obviously, i’ve written six), but part of me feels like they lose their value too quickly.

hear me out–

i know you can reread a book. bookmark your favourite passages. but sometimes you read something, and it really hits, and unless you literally rip out the page (i have mixed feelings about this), it’s gone until you open the book again.

i love art and my walls are filled with it. but the more i was writing about mental health, the more i wanted these words to manifest as physical, daily reminders.

i met amanda in january 2024 at the nest yoga retreat in costa rica, and it turned out it was her designs that made me even consider going on the retreat in the first place. to travel to a country i had never been to before, with people i had never met before (luckily it ended up being the correct impulse).

design

i tried designing my own prints and got a few proof copies from a print-on-demand service but they just weren’t hitting. the colours were too gray. the paper felt bleh. i didn’t like that they came rolled up. i didn’t like how the fonts looked.

it is painful for me to share these but it's all about the process, baby!

amanda had the eye, vision, and taurus-forward energy i needed to level up, and i was so excited when she said yes to me.

for months we went back and forth on fonts, colours, vibes. working between other commitments, full-time jobs, mental health struggles, the change of seasons.

when amanda let me know that her full-time job was asking more of her and her bandwidth for this project was now nil, i was so bummed.

i loved the direction we were heading in but i was extremely indecisive. every decision felt too permanent. we had gotten to a great point with the designs, but seasons changed from summer to fall and releasing a pink and yellow collection didn’t feel right to me anymore.

but i loved what we had created together.

i asked if she would be okay with sending me the illustrator files (the last time i had used adobe illustrator was in the early 2010s) and she graciously handed them off to me.

with the files in hand, at the beginning of this year, i started to tweak them. relearn illustrator. do a lot of googling. i started to really think about what colours and energy i would want in my own home.

colours

if you know me in real life, you know that from 2020 to most of 2024 i mainly wore white, cream and beige tones. it was part my way to control life during the pandemic, part being tired of all my clothes having visible dog hair on them. it snuck its way into my home decor. my life was the yoke lore song, beige.

in my white era

in 2024, something changed. probably partially trend influence, partially my own childhood love of brown. but for the first time in four years, i was wearing a different colour. as a brown-eyed, dark brown-haired person i grew up with mixed feelings about my colouring (something about white supremacy and eurocentric beauty standards), but now i love how brown makes me feel. i love when my outfits match my hair. to no one’s surprise, brown has started creeping its way into my home decor too.

in my brown era

these colours (i know, i know–brown is still neutral) feel so me and bring the warmth i was looking for.

logistics

next up, i had to figure out how to get these prints actually printed. i have felt very blessed by print-on-demand (i sell most of my poetry books that way), but for prints i had a feeling it wouldn’t cut it for me.

i wanted the experience of opening each order to have a wow factor. to be a little more premium. this was before the trade war begun, but being canadian, i did want the prints to feel more accessible to canadians. if i could support a local business with them, that would be even better.

i reached out to a local artist whose prints i love, ama liyanage, and she told me that she prints everything herself (i was NOT ready to do that) but that she’s heard good things about westmount signs & printing.

one of the biggest blessings of living somewhere for fifteen years is that you really know the people to ask about things and they really know who to recommend you to.

my experience with westmount signs has been nothing short of amazing. when i picked up my first proofs from them, i almost screamed. the quality can’t be compared to print-on-demand. the people who work there (shout out jorja and paul) are so friendly, easy-going, and great at what they do.

all that said, i’m so proud to announce that today, the pitter patter shop is officially open.

if you read all this, you deserve a treat–so from now until friday at midnight ET, you can get 15% off your purchase with the code SUBSTACKTY

you also get first access to the shop with the password HEYSUBSTACK. it opens to the public at 7 pm ET today, march 20, but if you want to check it out now (there are limited quantities of each print available while i figure out all the logistics of running a literal store), this is my thank you to you.

(yes i’m going to be annoying and not include any pictures in this post, i really want y’all to see ittttt)

this really has been a labour of love and an exercise in patience. learning about packaging, shipping, the entire shopify interface–i really feel like an old dog with new tricks today.

thanks for being here for my antics, for growing with me as i grow, for always supporting me as a try new things. really appreciate y’all.

xoxo
m