Wheelhouse Publishes 3 New Chapbooks

On behalf of Wheelhouse, especially co-designer of our chapbook series Gianna D'Emilio, I'm happy to announce the release of 3 new Wheelhouse Press titles:

Matina Stamatakis & John Moore Williams,  Xenomorphia

Juliet Cook,  Tongue Like a Stinger

Lars Palm,  Over This Here Rainbow

All are available, along with other titles we've published this year, through the Wheelhouse website, here

These publications are the first in a parade, it feels, of amazing work that dedicated, interesting, people have sent us.  These works, the Wheelhouse PRESS Anthology, and the upcoming regular issue of Wheelhouse, speak to the fractured, but very much alive and urgent contemporary poetry "scene."  As all presses, Wheelhouse has its particular wants and missions.  We're interested in work that not only pushes normative definitions of what text arts is or can be, but we're also interested in work that exposes itself to, and implicates itself in what's going on, where "what's going on" becomes one among many possible sub-cultural narratives.  Which is to ask of the work that it acknowledge its potential as well as its inertness as part of while resisting capital, new colonialism, and militarism.   What strikes me again and again, however, is the sheer diversity of poetries, experimental prose--of text arts--that these demands, needs, and wants, in some way meet.  That is, the diversity of counter-narratives that explode, if even for a moment, dominant forms, that do so by working inside-outwards.  

The three works above are good examples, I think, of such diversity in contemporary poetry and poetics.  Each work is unrelenting, each developing its own poetics, at times probably imploding its own poetics as well.  

Next up, as we furiously try to meet our deadlines, is the double issue of Wheelhouse, which includes the PRESS Anthology.  Proofs have been sent to authors now, and feedback is nearing completion.  So do look out for the next double issue (see posts below) by the end of this month.  

And keep an eye out for future chapbooks, usually released 2 or 3 at a time.  Next up:

Thom Donovan

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Felino Soriano

Laura Carter

Wheelhouse/PRESS & Other Simulacra

I'm beginning to get very excited about the next Wheelhouse, which features a double issue, or, rather, a regular issue of the journal plus online PRESS Literary Conference anthology (see PRESS post below for details). The design is really taking shape--thanks to Meghan McNealy, poet and book artist. Before all I could see were (very good) formations of marks on stacks and stacks of paper. Now I'm seeing shapes. We aim to get proofs into contributor hands by (very latest) June 24, and to get the issue and anthology out very soon afterward.

Above is the mock-up of the PRESS Anthology cover. Who knows, by the 24th we might scrap it for another cover, but at this point I hope not. Contributors to the anthology include:

Rodrigo Toscano
Kristin Prevallet
Jules Boykoff
Kaia Sand
Roger Farr
Laura Elrick
Leonard Schwartz
Meghan McNealy
Tung-Hui Hu
K. Lorraine Grahm
Tom Orange
Sarah Mangold
David Wolach
Jessica Baron
Steven Hendricks
Daniel Brohzutsky
Mark Wallace

And contributors to Wheelhouse 8 include:

Zach Schomberg & Emily Kendal Frey
Summer Block Kumar
Ryan Daley
Deborah Poe
Garth Graeper
Marja Hagborg
Joel Chace
Kristina Marie Darling

Elizabeth Bryant

and several others. See post below, as with all this lovely work coming out, we'll also be releasing, hopefully within the next few days, three new chapbooks by:

Thom Donovan
Juliet Cook
Matina Stamatakis/John Moore Williams

More chapbooks on the way after that, so Wheelhouse has been busy, due in large part to reup of the Wheelhouse Arts Collective. Since Wheelhouse's active members moved all over the place two years ago, we'd been working primarily as a journal of two editors--Eden Schultz, our arts director, and myself, the editor of the journal and press. In the past few months we've expanded, and now editors Meghan McNealy, Lionel Lints, Andrew Csank, Kate Robinson, and Gianna D'Emilio have come on board. All recent graduates of Evergreen's writing and book arts program, they're younger and more energetic than I am. So, Eden finally has some company that can keep up. Stand by for the work that is due out; I hope we, as a press, can continue to do such fine poetry, essay, prose, etc, the justice it deserves.