Hospitalogy / Illness / Wellness

Thanks much to Amber DiPietra, who I've written on in relation to her work below, for posting a blurb about my hospital poem practice, those poems of mine that have wound up in Hospitalogy. Hospitalogy was at one point part of my new book Occultations, but the thing kept growing as I kept having to see doctors or get to the hospital, and so eventually it turned in to its own book(s). Good timing too, as a) I'm wrapping up what I have edited now as book to be gotten off my desk (I'm cured!), and b) I'd been hoping to link to DiPietra's website/non-profit community "Write to Connect." Write to Connect is a meeting place for artists interested in and/or participating in practices relating to "illness and wellness." This, plus (relatedly) mutual friend and also fantastic poet Eleni Stecopolous's "The Poetics of Healing" blog, which I've put up as link on the blogroll to the right. 

I'll soon be writing on Stecopolous's new, beautiful, game-changing Armies of Compassion (Palm Press, 2010), which includes a radical re-write of one of my favorite chapbooks of all time, Eleni's  Autoimmunology. The chap can still be found online (I think?) thru Deep Oakland. Mine is one of two review-essays I'm due to write over the next several months, the other being CA Conrad's new Wave edition of The Book of Frank. Daunting coupla months! 

The three of us--Eleni, Amber, and myself--along with most other members of Nonsite Collective, as people who've experienced or are passionate about narrating the problematics of "disability," we have a great deal in common regarding outlook on illness & ecology as relates to wider politics and practices, plus some really productive underlap too. So hopefully as I begin to write on Armies I won't butcher the work too much. In the meantime, highly recommended. Just as I'd recommended DiPietra's work in my earlier post. Both have taught me tons in such a small amount of time... 

 

Occultations Book Release / Belladonna Series

Occultations, the full-length book of poems that I've been working on for the past 3 years, is entering the home stretch, now being edited and typeset.  Here's a mock-up of the cover, courtesy of Black Radish Books, with obviously some things not yet finished--blurbs not done, etc.  I'm not sure whether I'll be sticking with the cover, either.  So, maybe the thing will be bright pink and yellow with lots of pictures of dancing farm animals?  You never know.

Meantime, many thanks to Rachel Levitsky (whose incredible book Neighbor I've been writing on in relation to a poetics of spatial practice) and all the folks at Belladonna Books, as well as Thom Donovan, who has been tremendously supportive of Occultations, and of me, for putting myself and Eleni Stecopolous on the docket for a Belladonna New Books/New Presses Series reading at Dixon in NYC on April 13.  Eleni's new book is Armies of Compassion, out from Palm Press, and is--I can attest, as I've heard/read a good chunk of it--extraordinarily good.  So the reading, even if you hate my poetry, will be good. 

Official announcement coming soon, both here, at Belladonna, and elsewhere, but for now, if you're in the NYC area April 13, please join us.   I'll have not just my book, but another title from Black Radish Books, Marthe Reed's Gaze, with me. Gaze, as I posted before, is a beautiful book.  It should be a fun evening.  I'm happy to have learned that I'll be catching up with a lot of old friends, as well as new friends, various poets and editors out of Black Radish and other presses who have recently contacted.  So, a huge thanks again to Belladonna, Thom, and everyone who works on this series.   

PRESS 2009-2010: Jules Boykoff & Kaia Sand

Join poet/activists Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand for a tour of their latest work

                 

The Evergreen State College

Where: Sem II Building, Room C1105

    When: January 28, 7:30pm 

Boykoff and Sand helped organize the recent Econvergence conference in Portland (http://www.econvergence.org/). They are the founders of the Tangent Press and reading series in Portland (http://www.thetangentpress.org/readings.html) and co-authored a new book on guerrilla poetry entitled Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry and Public Space (Palm Press 2008). 

 

Boykoff is the author, most recently, of Hegemonic Love Potion (Factory School, 2009) and Once Upon a Neoliberal Rocket Badge (Edge Books, 2006). He has also published and lectured widely on the suppression of dissent in the United States. He is a contributor to scholarly journals like Antipode, Social Movement Studies, and New Political Science as well as popular publications like the Guardian, Common Dreams, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. He was an  invited speaker at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya (2006), where he presented research he carried out on U.S. media coverage of global warming.  

Sand is the author most recently of Remember to Wave, forthcoming this winter with Tinfish Press. This collection investigates political geography in Portland, Oregon, and contains a poetry walk she guides. Her  collection, interval (Edge Books 2004), was selected as a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year and she is also the author/designer of several chapbooks through the Dusie Kollektiv. She is a contributor to Jim Dine’s Hot Dreams series (Steidl Editions 2008) and recently performed poetry collaged entirely from the North American Free Trade Agreement at the Positions Colloquium of the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver, British Columbia. At present, she is at work on The Happy Valley Project, multi-media collaborations investigating housing foreclosures and finance.

           

ANNUAL FUCK THE HOLIDAYS SMALL PRESS GIVEAWAY SPECIAL OFFER EXTRAVAGANZA

             image of limited edition artist book, PRESSING, by Wheelhouse Chapbook Designer, Kate Robinson, available thru Wheelhouse Press

From now until the end of the year I, on behalf of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, will be listing small presses in need of YOUR help.  Of course all presses all the time are in need of your help, including the most successful presses, i.e., those small hubs that continually make books that we love and about which you're liable to say: how do they do it?  Well, almost always by the seat of their pants.  That's how.  

Since Wheelhouse is predominantly an online venture--with our first letterpressed chapbooks about to be published this upcoming summer--we don't have anything physical to offer as a holiday special, or gift for the holidays, etc.  Not that you shouldn't give yourself the gift of our current, past, and upcoming issues and online chapbooks.  So, we figured we'd alert you to holiday offers that other small presses we love are offering.  These books are usually inexpensive, and now they are really inexpensive.  So, see below.  Take advantage of the b-shit holiday season, tell it to fuck off by getting something from each of the below presses.  We did, and we're f-ing poor--and seasonally depressed.   

I'll add a few more presses in separate posts, including (since they did not fit in the taglines below), Taup. Sky, Cuneiform Press, BlazeVox, and the new artist book poetry collective BLACK RADISH BOOKS, which, among the first titles will be yours truly's Occultations, and books by Susana Gardner, Nicole Mauro, Jill Stengel, Cara Benson, and several others.  For now:

WHEELHOUSE PRESS FUND:  

If you live in or around Seattle, do think about donating to the Wheelhouse PRESS fund. PRESS is a literary series of events, performances, conferences, devoted to the intersection of socially engaged text arts and radical politics.  We regularly have guests read, perform, and collaborate, and of course this costs money.  

If interested in donating--come to one of our events!  They are all announced here and thru Facebook.  Next up is CA Conrad, beginning March 4th, ending March 7th, at The Evergreen State College.  You can also contact me by email for token donations.

BELLADONNA BOOKS:

HOLIDAY SALE

---

Belladonna Book announces BIG HOLIDAY SALE

Buy 4 chaplets, get 1 free!

FREE SHIPPING for orders of $100.00 or more.

Hurry... there are only 6 complete Elders Series left!

Chapbooks are extremely limited (editions of 125) and sell out quickly, never to be seen again in this form.

Also, please consider donating to Belladonna Series and toward the beautiful publication of brilliant avant-garde and multidimensional feminist writing.

PALM PRESS:

Amazing titles, including the recently published Disaster Suites by Rob Halpern, Landscapes of Dissent by Kaia Sand and Jules Boykoff, The Shunt by David Buuck, and the forthcoming Armies of Compassion by Eleni Steccoplous.  Get them here.

ESSAY PRESS:

Essay Press is offering the following end-of-year specials for our Facebook friends: 1) Buy 2 (two) titles on-line via PayPal & we will chose a third book from our catalogue for you at no extra charge. -OR- 2) Mail order only: '6 for 56.' Receive all SIX Essay Press titles for $56.00 (includes all shipping & handling).  Website: http://www.facebook.com/l/28aff;www.essaypress.org Mail orders (check or money order):  Essay Press 208 utica Street Ithaca, NY 14850

E-mail: essaypress@gmail.com

CHAX PRESS:

From Charles: 

"Thanks to all who have supported Chax Press. Facebook Friends helped us get through to this point, and I hope you will help us now! All contributions welcome and tax deductible. Visithttp://www.facebook.com/l/28aff;chax.org/donate.htm, or send to 411 N 7th Ave Ste 103, Tucson AZ 85705.". Event: Chax Press Annual Fund: HELP! What: Fundraiser Start Time: Today, December 16 at 10:00pm End Time: Monday, February 1 at 12:00am Where: 411 N 7th Ave Ste 103, Tucson, AZ 85705 To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below: http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=220722659680&mid=193c257G23e5f212G45083c3G7

FROM PORTABLE PRESS AT YO-YO LABS, FORTHCOMING:

)((eco (lang)(uage(reader)) 
Edited by Brenda Iijima

Published by Portable Press at Yo Yo Labs (www.yoyolabs.com)

Forthcoming August 2009

How can poetic language engage a global ecosystem under duress? How do poetic forms, structures, syntaxes and grammars contend or comply with the forces of environmental disaster? Can language innovation proactively forward the cause of living sustainably in a world of radical interconnectedness? How do issues of geography, race, gender and class intersect with the development of individual or collective ecopoetic projects?

In this collection of essays, poets offer responses to these and other questions concerning poetry and ecological ethics.

Contributors include: Tyrone Williams, Leslie Scalapino, Laura Elrick, Julie Patton, Jonathan Skinner, Peter Larkin, Marcella Durand, Tracie Morris, Karen Anderson, Jill Magi, Tina Darragh, Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Jed Rasula, James Sherry, Jack Collom, Evelyn Reilly and Brenda Iijima.

LITMUS PRESS:

BHARAT JIVA kari edwards 2009 • 132 pp. • $15.00 ISBN: 978-0-9819310-0-5 Original cover art by Frances Blau Transdada Blog CAConrad reflects on kari edward's Bharat jiva on PhillySound. Mortified before kari's Bharat jiva; November 27, 2009 Tim Peterson reports on the book launch for Bharat jiva and  NO GENDER on Mappemunde Blog; October 14, 2009 Bharat jiva is named an SPD Best-Seller for  September/October 2009.

UGLY DUCKING PRESSE

AWESOME New Books Here:

BLOOD PUDDING PRESS:

Holiday sale on many titles here.

CY PRESS:

Many incredible chapbooks here

NO TELL BOOKS:

Get them while you can here.

DELETE PRESS:

Beautiful artist books by wonderful poets here

David Buuck's The Shunt (Palm Press, 2009) - Initial Thoughts Post-Participle(ation)

Just read David Buuck's new The Shunt, another amazing title from Jane Sprague's Palm Press.

Briefly: The Shunt is, as Juliann Spahr notes, "...your brain on war." Imagine n a person in a town in a place with a computer and a television, each tuned to the what if scenario of some imaginary world's (why so familiar?...) distillation of mutilation into pixilated xanax facsimiles, a newsocracy of sound bite without bite, rehearsals of waste and excess and the shakes without waste and excess and the shakes but crash test dummy versions of waste and excess and the shakes. And then imagine that suis generis Spahr speaks of in relation to this work, and give it a name for now: between the cracks and the fissures and the muscle tares at a hundred frames per second there is a particular exhaustion born of sensitivity to all this artifice and mask covering up and recovering from the undertow, the real shit, the onslaught of constant slaughter of which we are, all, culpable. Call it a poetry of counterirony in the face of countercounterinsurgency. Though its tropes play off the image of the failing stand up comedian, as Sianne Ngai rightly notes, it is the aftermath of that comedian's waste, his/her post-stage embarrassments - the failiure of one's affective labor - that is our discomfort. With this imaginary world we are thankful is not real. Of an extraordinary book of post-traumatic recipes we are thankful for having not had to encounter. The Shunt, for instance.