The Italian Connection

Poetry, Photography and Letterpress Printing: a presentation and talk by Veronica Beedham and Janine Raedts

The making of ‘Between Wind and Clouds’: Our story begins at a photography exhibition in the Palazzo Callas in Sirmione, Lombardy and tells of how an English poet, an Italian photographer and an English letterpress printer in Vittorio Veneto, got together to create a collaborative work of art.

This presentation is not just for poetry book lovers, but also those who take an interest in the arts of hand-printing or photography.

Janine Raedts founded the Blue Print Press, a private letterpress studio, in Vittorio Veneto (Italy) in 2013. It puts the craft and love back into book production. Janine’s pamphlets reside in private, public and institutional collections in the UK and the US.

Veronica Beedham’s work has been published widely in poetry magazines and journals. She has received several prizes including the Troubadour International Prize (2011) and the Overton Pamphlet Prize (2016). In 2021, she was placed second in the Acumen International Poetry Prize. Her first pamphlet, A Sense of Place, was published in 2017 by Loughborough University.

Renzo Bertasi lives and works in Soiano del Lago on Lake Garda (BS). From the 1970’s onwards he has experimented with photography and has published more than 20 catalogues of his work as well as a couple of books on historical material relating to Lake Garda. He has taken part in international exhibitions in Beijing, Sweden, Germany, Austria and Spain and his work has been acquired by CSAC, Parma, Italy.