Smith's latest project is Typoetica, a portfolio of 12 poetry broadsides. To mark the publication, the University's Special Collections is hosting the exhibition Typoetica: Typographic Poetry Broadsides, Kinetic Books & More, on view through April 26.

The exhibition features the portfolio and preparatory materials as well as additional works by Smith from the University collection.

A reception and poetry reading with Smith and several of the writers featured in Typoetica will be held at 7 p.m. today in the Olin Library Level Four Reading Room. Readers include Edward Boccia, Jan Garden Castro, D.B. Dowd, Jane Birdsall Lander, Judith Saul Stix, Joseph L. Tucker and Jane Wayne. An exhibition viewing in Special Collections will immediately follow.

"Bob is quite a Renaissance design person," said curator Anne Posega, head of Special Collections. "He's done printmaking, photography, commercial graphic design, these elaborate movable books, which he calls 'bookinetics,' and even fountains in Forest Park. He's really a jack-of-all-trades."

Smith began Typoetica in 1991 after helping a friend publish a poetry pamphlet.

"I thought, 'That was interesting,' and so I designed a broadside for the fun or it, interpreting her poem as a typographical statement," Smith said. "I liked it, she liked it, and I thought, well, maybe I should do some more."

The finished portfolio, published in an edition of 25 by Smith's Eclectic Press, features work by 12 poets, all friends of the artist. Each sheet is painstakingly hand-set in letters from Smith's personal collection of antique metal type -- a process that provided certain unique challenges. "I had to watch the poems because I might not have enough capital T's or something," Smith said with a laugh, admitting that one piece had to be redone when he ran out of letters.

Smith does point out that one broadside -- Big Trouble '90 by Dowd, associate professor of illustration in the School of Art -- also includes computer imagery. "I thought that would be appropriate," Smith said. "Douglas is kind of unconventional."