Wheelhouse Magazine, special double issue - PRESS Anthology & #8 - is now live.

http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com 

Click on the PRESS cover on the Wheelhouse main page for the freely downloadable PRESS Anthology 2009, with viral forms by: Rodrigo Toscano, Kristin Prevallet, Jules Boykoff, Laura Elrick, Mark Wallace, Kaia Sand, K. Lorraine Graham, Tom Orange, Leonard Schwartz, Steven Hendricks, and several others. Cover design by Meghan McNealy.

Peruse Wheelhouse #8 as usual, by clicking on poetry, prose, essay, chapbook, etc. links at the top of the page. Wheelhouse 8 is proud to feature new viral forms from:Elizabeth Bryant, Joel Chace, Cecilia Chapman, K.R. Copeland, Ryan Daley, Thom Donovan, Emily Kendal Frey & Zachary Schomburg, Garth Graeper, Marja Hagborg, Summer Block Kumar, Dorothee Lang & Jeff Crouch, Travis Macdonald, Karen Neuberg, Deborah Poe, Nicole Steinberg, Edith Sˆdergran, (English translation by Christian Ward), Zachary Buscher, John Moore Williams, Changming Yuan, and others. Cover design by Eden Schulz and Andrew Topel.

We're in love with the work in this double issue and tremendously happy to have had the chance to gather PRESS contributors for another round, this time via publishing their work. Thanks to all the contributors. And a huge thanks to new Wheelhouse editors Lionel Lints, Meghan McNealy, and Gianna D'Emilio, who worked so hard on putting the PRESS anthology together. 

Please do check out all the new work, and if you get a chance, please also spread the word.

In Solidarity & On Behalf of The Editors,
David Wolach

STAIN Reading

Had a blast reading for the wildly good and long-running Stain of Poetry series, curated by Amy King & Ana Bozicevic.  It was wonderful to hear Julian, Adam, Chris, Nada, and Scott read their work.  I'd heard Adam read in Philly before, and I'd heard Julian read a couple times, but both read newer work - Julian from a cycle xe's just now putting together, and Adam read exclusively from When You Bit..., a book I hadn't seen or heard from.  Scott I'd heard at another Stain reading, his work continuously mining in subtle ways the counter-narratives of Mexico and Texas. And though I've read much of Nada and Chris's work (if you don't have Chris's 1913 chapbook, I'd advise getting it), I hadn't heard them read.  The live-sonic and performative aspects I was missing I found last night.  Nada's timing and sense of "performance" is very cool, and Chris's sonic play is pitched live, giving the rhythms and ambiences a lower tonal register that drives the ear into the ground.

Julian, who is one of my favorite contemporary poets, again blew me away.  Where Chris drives your ear into the ground, Julian drives your ear into the dirt - dirt, drawl, and the dross of the liquidated multiple subject make up a refashioning of old tropes in order to implode them.  The new work is less metric than the work I've read of Julian's in the past.  Also more understated in some way I can't quite place now.  

All the work was outstanding, and as I've written elsewhere, all are poets whose work I think is, each in such a different way, evocative of contemporary non-mainstream poetry.  But with thanks to Amy and Ana, amid such diversity was a felt sense of community, or at least a warmth and sense of friendship that one doesn't always feel exists within contemporary poetry, let alone this fractured landscape's live readings.  

Hence a huge thanks to Amy and Ana.  Was great to kick back with Amy, my brother and his partner, along with several folks I'd met for the first time.  And also a huge thanks to Erica Kaufman, who graciously and with good humor read some of my polyvocal work with me (which, among others, steals lines from her work).

Can't remember the last time I stayed out late and didn't regret it the next day.  

Stain Reading featuring Yours Truly - See You There

What a lineup.  I'm a little demured.  As a long time fan of Adam, Nada, Scott, Chris, and Julian, I can say with confidence that this will be another wonderful Stain of Poetry reading--even with me in the lineup.

Please support your fellow poets and drop by.  A huge thanks to Amy King and Ana Bozicevic for the invite.

Please, if you come, be prepared to participate.  I'll need at least 2 volunteers who can project.   

Saturday, August 1st @ 7 p.m. 

~ Julian Brolaski, Adam Fieled, Nada Gordon, Scott Hightower, Chris Stackhouse & David Wolach ~

Goodbye Blue Monday
(go through cafe room
to back garden stage)
1087 Broadway
(corner of Dodworth St)
Brooklyn, NY 11221-3013
(718) 453-6343

J M Z trains to Myrtle Ave
or J train to Kosciusko St.

~

Julian T. Brolaski is the author of the chapbooks Hellish Death Monsters (Spooky Press,  2001), Letters to Hank Williams (True West Press, 2003), The Daily Usonian(Atticus/Finch, 2004) and Madame Bovary’s Diary (Cy Press, 2005) (under the name Tanya Brolaski), Buck in a Corridor (flynpyntar, 2008) and the blog herm of warsaw.  Xir first book gowanus atropolis is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse. Brolaski lives in Brooklyn where xe writes poetry, serves as a Litmus Press editor, plays country music inThe Low & the Lonesome, and curates th’every-other-monthly freakshow Mongrel Vaudeville.

~

Adam Fieled is a poet, musician, and critic based in Philadelphia. He has released several books and chapbooks, maintains two blogs,and is finishing his PhD at Temple University, where he teaches.

~

Nada Gordon is the author of four poetry books: Folly, V. Imp, Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?, and foriegnn bodie – and, with Gary Sullivan, an e-pistolary techno-romantic non-fiction novel, Swoon. She practices poetry as deep entertainment and is a proud member of the Flarf Collective. Visit her blog athttp://ululate.blogspot.com.

~

Scott Hightower’s third collection, “Part of the Bargain,” received the 2004 Hayden Carruth Award. His translations from Spanish have garnered him a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. He is a contributing editor to “The Journal.”  His reviews frequently appear in “Coldfront Magazine” and “Boxcar Poetry Review.”   A native of central Texas, he lives with one foot in New York City, one in Texas, and one in Madrid, Spain. He teaches at NYU, and has taught poetry, non-fiction writing, and translation at Drew, F.I.T., Fordham, and Poets House.

~

Christopher Stackhouse is the author of poetry collected in the chapbook Slip (Corollary Press, 2005); co-author of Seismosis (1913 Press, 2006), a dialogic collaboration featuring Stackhouse’s drawings and text by writer/professor John Keene (Northwestern University), with essays from poet Ed Roberson and poet/critic Geoffrey Jacques. He holds has MFA in Writing/Interdisciplinary Studies from Bard College; is a Cave Canem Writers Fellow; and is a 2005 Fellow in Poetry, New York Foundation for the Arts. His recent essays have been published in the literary journal American Poet, and the anthology A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years. He will be a guest faculty member in the Naropa University Summer Writing Program 2009, at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. He organizes Readings at Max Protetch Gallery in New York City with poet/assistant gallery director Stuart Krimko. Currently completing a manuscript of poetry, while also doing research for the development of a non-fiction book on poetics, Stackhouse lives and works in Brooklyn New York.

~

David Wolach is professor of writing, poetics, & philosophy at The Evergreen State in Olympia, Washington, and visiting poet in Bard College’s Workshop in Language & Thinking.  Author of Fractions of M, The Transcendental Insect Reader, Acts of Art/Works of Violence, and the forthcoming Scripto Erratum (sound/text compositions, scored with composer Arun Chandra & video artist Tasha Glen), David’s work has appeared this year or is forthcoming from Bird Dog, CRIT, Night Train, Diode, The Concelebratory Shoehorn Review, Venereal Kittens, [...]: An Anthology of New American Writing, AB OVO, and Ignavia Press: Journal of Transgressive Queer Writing.  Much of his work is multi-media and performative, and has been featured at venues such as Buffalo Poetics Series 2009, The American Cybernetics Conference 2009, and Bard’s Visiting Poets Series.  David is also editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press and curator of PRESS: A Cross-Cultural Literary Conference.

~

Hosted by Amy King and Ana Božičević

http://stainofpoetry.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=103132898882

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

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT KILLED BY CONGRESS

According to insiders with whom I've just spoken (as of last night, 7pm EST), the labor / commerce Congressional sub-committee, charged with getting the Employee Free Choice Act through the House, have just gutted the legislation by stripping it of card-check neutrality. "Card-check," as it's referred to, would have erased (or at least numbed) several decades of right-to-work anti-union legislation, making it once again (as it is in many industrialized countries) a right for workers to have a legally recognized union by showing simple membership-majority--"checked" via a neutral third party (an arbitration judge, for instance). This provision was the Employee Free Choice Act. It was what those of us within the labor movement, including friend, colleague (and despite what I'm about to say) deeply committed unionist, Stuart Acuff (vice president of the AFL-CIO), have been fighting for, shaping, designing, for nearly a decade.

This is news that means several things, not least of which: the labor movement under Obama will have no resurgence. We, as workers, will continue to have fewer rights, and we as a labor movement will continue to shrink. That this legislation has been gutted is one sign of how weak, in fact politically irrelevant, the labor movement has become. And this point is what I'd like to focus on here. In two parts, brief, so we can all ponder them in their starkness:

1) the majority of those who gutted the Employee Free Choice Act are those whose elections to office were (in part or in whole) made possible by labor organizing and endorsement. I'm told that Obama officials had a hand in pressuring the committee to kill the legislation, despite Obama's promises to support it. So, there you go. Says a great deal about Obama. Says even more about why we need not, nor should not, as a labor movement, put money and energy into elected officials.

2) Due to (1), and, due, I think, to incredible unwillingness to take the risks necessary - e.g., to be militant and organize more wild cat strikes, to organize more in the south, to be more intelligently "on the offense" when it comes to workplace organzing (in terms of $$ as well as tactically) - THE AFL-CIO is EFFECTIVELY COVERING THIS UP. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch, but there is a scramble within the AFL (and within Andy-the-manager-Stern's camp too) to figure out how to spin this such that the AFL and New Directions come out looking good, that the labor movement comes out looking a winner on this as a piece of nothing legislation finally winds its way around the House and Senate until Obama signs it and everyone smiles and shakes hands for the cameras.

To reiterate--the AFL-CIO is saying nothing, is doing very little other than figuring out how to take a shower and smell nice. As evidence, here's the latest set of AFL blog posts. They went out over the wires this morning, well after the Act was officially gutted, and not a word about it (as of July 17, 10:51pm ET).

What to do? Eventually we'll need to organize from the bottom up, strategically, intelligently, but militantly - where the term "strike," we remember does noes not have four letters. Meantime, call members of the sub-committee and tell them you want card-check. Also call Obama's office and say the same thing. But just as importantly, contact the AFL-CIO and (as a suggestion) say that you only support a labor movement that supports laborers, i.e., card check.

New Chapbook Forthcoming / New Work Online

I just found out my new chapbook, Hospitalogy, is due out from Andrew Lundwall's Scantily Clad Press in August. As is often the case, I forgot to adjust for color in uploading the cover image, and so what you see to the right is a very ugly (inverted) version of what I think you'll see upon publication.

One of the poems, along with other poetry of mine from another book project (Prefab Eulogies) can be found in the amazing new issue of Eklesographia (Ahadada Books), guest edited by Amy King. The issue features wonderful poetry all around, a diverse cadre--startling work from Linh Dinh, Annie Finch, Adam Fieled, Tomaz Salamun, and many others (hell, just read it...).

The book, Hospitalogy, as may be evident somewhat from the poem in Eklesographia (having another poem in the issue doing similar, but more overt work), is in part a meditation on, and in some ways is in conversation with, Rob Halpern's poetics as I read them in Disaster Suites. Not to suggest that my end of the conversation is as generative as Rob's has been, and will be. But Hospitalogy began three or four years ago, shortly after falling ill, as a way for me to think about, really to try to rethink, a poetics of disablement viz. the problematic of the confessional poem. I have almost no energy at the moment, so I'll hold off writing here on the confessional poem as I see its western historical valences, its extraordinarily well-tread (and well-taken) negative critique from (at least) Stein onward. I'll only say here that as the poems came in the wake of my first adulthood sustained interactions with the American healthcare-less system, tropes of confession, the confessional poem, kept coming to mind when thinking about the doctor-patient discourse; the question-answer-question conversation between doctor and patient is not dialogic, nor is it particularly diagnostic - it's confessional. The ways in which language is internalized, and the patient's mythos of personhood inflated through a cycle of confession, expectation of (expert) epiphany through logos, back into confession again, I found both sensorially miserable and perceptibly interesting. A year or two later I encountered Rob Halpern's work, then Rob himself and The Nonsite Collective, then Disaster Suites, and Rob's interest in a poetics of patiency, which, for Rob, I believe, hooks up intimately with rethinking the use (value) of the lyric, a new lyricism, which is as much a critique of lyrical poetry generally understood as it is an exploration and expansion of "it." So, Hospitalogy quickly became a conversation with both Halpern/lyricism and patiency/disaster, how this complex poetics informs, unhouses, sometimes backspaces the logos of rethinking confession/medical discourses. The books coming out so closely together should make for more interesting conversations between us when we meet up again at Bard College this summer for a semester of teaching.

Thanks very much to Scantily Clad for publishing the work--do visit them, as many of their titles are online in pdf form to read now for free, and since opening their press a couple years ago (at most), they have published some wonderful books.

Meantime, new work of mine can be found in the lovely new issue of The BluePrint Review, care of kind and patient poet-editor, Dorothee Lang. Click here to check it out. And work of mine is soon forthcoming from:

No Tell Motel
Eklesographia: An Imprint of Ahadada Books
Dusie

So, do look out for these subtle works of genius. Seriously, thanks to the editors--Reb Livingston, Amy King, and Susana Gardner--for including my poetry in their pages.

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.

Tentative Guest Lineup for PRESS 2009-10

As Wheelhouse Magazine & Press puts its final touches on the PRESS 2008-9 Anthology, The Evergreen State College and Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, along with other generous donors, are gearing up for PRESS 2009-10 - details on events and schedule as they come. Here is the (very) preliminary list of guest poets who will read from & perform their work and contribute to program workshops next year (subject to change):

Eleni Stecopoulos, author of, most recently, Autoimmunology and Armies of Compassion

David Buuk, author of, most recently, The Shunt (see initial thoughts post below)

CA Conrad, author of, most recently, The Book of Frank and Deviant Propulsion

Erica Kaufman, author of, most recently, Censory Impulse, curator/publisher of Belladonna Books / The Belladonna Reading Series

Kythe Heller, author of, most recently, Immolation

New Titles from Ungovernable Press

Lars Palm of Ungovernable Press has been busy, as have been the poets whose new work Lars and Ungovernable recently published. Check out new work from Adam Fieled, Mark Young, Alana Madison, as well as a Diana Magallon / Jeff Crouch collaboration. Forthcoming from Ungovernable Press is fascinating poet Ed Baker, whose work spans forty years and myriad media. Another Baker chapbook, Points/Counterpoints has just been released by Fact-Simile Editions (available now), and yet another chapbook of his, Asherah, will be published by yours truly and Wheelhouse Magazine & Press - slated release late spring / early summer. Head over to Ungovernable Press and do check out the free e-versions - all downloadable booklets, and print friendly.

http://ungovernablepress.weebly.com/

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.

Political Theater: Article on Conservatism, Neo-Liberalism, & the Corporatization of Academic Institutions

Article: Recent controversies over political theater at Evergreen, a comparatively "progressive" college campus, exemplify just how conservative academic institutions are.

http://cxpj.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/counter-point-journal-03.pdf

New Book from Ungovernable Press / New Work from BlazeVox , Fact-Simile, & Counterexample Poetry & Poetics

Dear All,

Just a brief update on my (which is to say "our") output. Occasionally I generate poems under the name "David Wolach" (sometimes others - it's a fun game, try it!) as extension of the usual - editing & teaching. Please support the small presses and check out my new book, book alter (ed) from Ungovernable Press (with reviews on the e-version up at Good Reads), as well as the new fabulous work by a diverse cadre of poets thanks to the editors of the fine the journals/presses below. Also, look out for forthcoming work that I hear is just round the corner - from Dusie, Eklesographia: An Imprint of Ahadada Books, Venereal Kittens, and 5_Trope. And my first full-length collection, occultations, from the new poetry press/artist book collective, Black Radish, which includes Dusie authors, Bruce Covey of Coconut, and artists in residence at DADA HOUSE (more on this in a separate post).Thanks much to the editors! And more expectoration from me soon - been saving it for a rainy day.

New chapbook from Lars Palm's Ungovernable Press, book alter (ed) - through Good Reads.

Cycle of work from Prefab Eulogies and Living Rooms, BlazeVOX - a ton of good poets/poems

Fact-Simile 2.1 - Spring/Summer 2009
FS SP09


Interview with
Kristin Prevallet

New work by:

J. Townsend
Michael Leong
Anselm Parlatore
Kevin Kilroy
Andrew K. Peterson
Rosmarie Waldrop
Jefferson Navicky
Marie Larson
David Wolach
Serena Rose Chopra
Robert Roley
Donald Illich
Andrew Lundwall
Ashe Middleton
Joseph Harrington
Sara Nolan
Susan Lewis
Reed Bye
Nick Demske
Craig Rebele

Featured Poet Page/E-Chap, B Sides, sampling of work from projects in progress / works that are not included in the final versions of these book projects (a lovely idea poet and editor Felino Soriano approached me with). Cover image by Michael Wolach. Enjoy: Couterexample Poetry & Poetics

Wheelhouse Updates

Rodrigo Toscano & Tom Orange in Rodrigo Toscano's Collapsible Poetics Theater, PRESS 2008, The Evergreen State College




SPECIAL PRESS ANTHOLOGY COMING THIS MONTH

One year ago Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, in concert with The Evergreen State College (and other donors - see website list), hosted what has now turned into an annual event: PRESS, a set of workshops, discussions, readings, and performances committed to working through the myriad intersections between text arts and left political movements. What, for instance, are we as writers doing? What are our organizational politics and/or our poetics? Rob Halpern & NONSITE COLLECTIVE kicked off this year's PRESS, and a day-long set of workshops and performative events are closing us out.

We at Wheelhouse are hard at work at finalizing the collection of submissions. We're in the home stretch of designing and producing this new special issue of Wheelhouse, the PRESS Anthology, PRESS:ESC (cover design by Andrew Topel). In this issue, new work from:

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 several other writers involved in last year's discussions. We're excited to re-up this conversation, to broaden and torque it via recontextualization and imminent critique, to extend our dialogic processes. Thanks to all the contributors, donors, and organizers of PRESS for making this issue come to life. Keep an eye out - slated release date, June 15.

FORTHCOMING CHAPBOOKS

The open chapbook submissions reading period has now closed. Check here and the Wheelhouse website (or the Wheelhouse Facebook Group Page) for future reading periods. If you have not heard back from us with regard to your submission, please be patient - we'll be in touch soon. Look out for new chapbooks fothcoming (more to come for this year) by:

Juliet Cook
Thom Donovan
Matina Stamatakis and John Moore Williams
Dorothy Lang and Jeff Crouch
Felino Soriano
Elizabeth Kate Switaj
Lars Palm
Laura Carter
Ed Baker

... plus...

DZANC BOOKS & STORY SOUTH AWARDS

Congratulations to Tom Sheehan. His prose work "Knickers" was selected by Dzanc Books' as one of the "Best of the Web 2008." "Knickers" will be published in Dzanc Books' Best of 2008 anthology. Congratulations also to CL Bledsoe. CL's "Leaving the Garden" was chosen by Story South's Million Writer's Award as one of the Notable Stories of 2008. A huge thank you to Tom, CL, and Dzanc Books and Story South - and the judges for these awards. Go to Dzanc Books to pre-order the Best of 2008 Anthology, and while you're at it, order the Best of 2007 Anthology, with two works from Wheelhouse contributors. Dzanc Books is a not-profit press; proceeds of book sales go to help their urban schools writing initiatives, as well as several other good works.

ALERT FROM AMY KING: READ THIS, THEN ACT!


message 1: by Amy (new)
04/13/2009 09:49AM

135295 A couple of months ago, Amazon quietly unleashed some sort of campaign to strip certain books of their sales rankings. Unfortunately (& not so coincidentally), most of the books targeted fell under the “Gay/Lesbian” category. Once removed from the sales rankings and placed within the “Adult” category, these books no longer show up in search engines or in Amazon searches. In other words, sales death. How to kill gay books in one easy step? Watch while Amazon quietly removes gay and lesbian titles and renders them invisible. Censorship at its deadliest. Many good people have already been posting and protesting, and though you may not rely on big name middlemen for your goods, much of America does. Make it your business to send a word of protest Amazon’s way!



~~~~


UPDATE – I just checked. I’M THE MAN WHO LOVES YOU, my book of poems that has less sexual content than the abstinence-promoting, Twilight, has been relegated to the “Adult” category because I happened to have labeled it, myself, Gay and Lesbian. Go figure. It ain’t even erotic poetry,peeps!
http://www.amazon.com/im-man-who-loves-y...

Lots of links to folks reactions on my blog: http://amyking.org/

The Huffington Post -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emma-rubys...

A Petition -- http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-prot...

And of course, more seed for the campaign to use places like SPD (Small Press Distribution), indie bookstores, etc.

I'd check your own book if there's any GLBT interest in it -- anyone can label your book as such, which Amazon will have used to remove your book from their search engines.

Best,

Amy

_______


Amy's Alias
http://amyking.org/

ROB HALPERN READS TOMORROW, WEDNESDAY NIGHT

My Review of Disaster Suites here:

Disaster Suites by Rob Halpern

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
If, as in Halpern's (and Brady's) Snow Sensitive Skin, to hear is, in deliberate and painstaking (and painful) ways, to listen to what one's ear hears and does not hear, Disaster Suites is the broken music box of worlds of distances that feel our suppositions of the most intimate proximity to catastrophes that are, in fact, unFELT miles away. The distance between "I" and its supposed referents; the distance between disaster felt and disaster thought, then said; the distance between a lyric of simplistic lament or needy wonderment and the radio-dialer's war-ruptured provisioning of what, limply, the singer has just heard (or witnessed) from afar. Disaster Suites ruptures and eviscerates, then acknowledges its comparative inertness as typography on a page in a book in your hands. It does so unrelentingly, and this is the ugly and beautiful ways air shapes time. Hence, this is a music unearthed, then dismantled.


View all my reviews.



Rob Halpern at Evergreen May 27th (spread ---> word)
An Evening of Reading & Urgent Discussion With

ROB HALPERN

Poet & Founder of Nonsite Collective

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

8pm @ The Evergreen State College Library (Underground)


Dear Friends,

Please join students & faculty of Experiments in Text, Prolegomena to a Future Poetics, and Book Arts: The Organism that Literature Demands in welcoming poets Rob Halpern and Sarah Mangold. To kick off this year's PRESS Literary Arts & Politics series, Halpern will read from his poetry, including his newly released Disaster Suites, and Mangold, editor of Bird Dog Magazine, will introduce Rob and the evening's events by reading from her work. The reading and discussion will continue the PRESS series focus on the intersections between contemporary art and the larger socipolitical frames. The event is free and open to the public, but donations are welcome. Proceeds from book sales will go to the UFE Student Solidarity Fund, a fund set up by the faculty union to help defray student tuition costs.

WHEN? Wednesday, May 27 @ 8pm

WHERE? The Evergreen State College Library Underground (refreshments provided)

We're very pleased that Rob Halpern has come to Evergreen from San Francisco – a kind of “coming back” as Halpern is an alumnus of Evergreen. And we're happy to have Sarah return to Evergreen for a second reading. If you missed her during the first PRESS Literary conference, don't miss her work this year!

This reading is dedicated to Ernestine Kimbro. Without her, like many things important in this life, the reading would not have happened. Thank you, Ernestine, for helping us to "follow our fears."

In Solidarity
David Wolach & Elizabeth Williamson


ON THE ARTISTS:

Poet Tyrone Williams writes of Rob Halpern's Snow Sensitive Skin: “Snow Sensitive Skin is a remarkable collaboration between Taylor Brady and Rob Halpern. Beautifully designed by Michael Cross for Atticus Finch, this black-on-black chapbook, as dense intellectually, as culturally 'thick' as many, much longer, books of poetry, is really a collaboration between Brady, Halpern, Cross and the inspiration for this meditation on the 2006 Israeli bombing of Lebanon, the music of Lebanese musician and artist Mazen Kerbaj. Brady’s and Halpern’s alternately terse and lapidary lyrics acknowledge the distance between them and Kerbaj, their sense of culpability and impotence, even as it rages against these 'individual' reactions and conditions in order to situate the war within and as a function of global economies. And always, always, they return (as did the bombs, the commands, etc.) to the body .”

Rob Halpern is the author of several books of poetry, including Rumored Place (Krupskaya Books, 2004), Snow Sensitive Skin (a collaboration with Taylor Brady, Atticus/Finch Chapbooks, 2007), and most recently Disaster Suites (Palm Press, 2009). He’s currently co-editing the poems of the late Frances Jaffer together with Kathleen Fraser, and translating the early essays of Georges Perec, the first which, “For a Realist Literature,” appeared in Chicago Review. An active participant in the Nonsite Collective, he lives in San Francisco.

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Sarah Mangold is founder and editor of Bird Dog, a journal of innovative writing and art. Currently working as a Program Coordinator at the University of Washington Extension Program—after seven years in a private library. BA University of Oklahoma; MFA San Francisco State, 1999. Recipient of an Individual Artist Award form the Seattle Arts Commission and residencies at MacDowell and Djerassi. Her books include Household Mechanics, Parlor, Picture of the Basket, and Boxer Rebellion.

Chax Press Nees Your Help

Chax, one of the most innovative poetry presses, and one of the few that does large and small scale letterpress work, is doing well, and can do even better by getting some donations from you. As Charles Alexander, editor of Chax, puts it:

"The first steps we must take this year are to secure the full-time attention and salary of the Executive Director and hire an assistant. As we begin our work toward our new goals, we are being assisted by an experienced, successful organizational development consultant. One of our important commitments to an enduring future is to fund such a consultant to help us grow in a sustainable manner. As our activities become more regular and the Executive Director’s time is devoted to artistic direction, fine art book production, and long-range vision, we will also add a marketing/book sales and fundraising coordinator. In addition, we plan to expand our current Youth Education Programs (school projects in our studio, residencies in schools) and hire a Youth Programs Coordinator."

If you have at least $25, help them out. It's worth every penny, with incredible authors published in beautiful additions (Elizabeth Treadwell, Linh Dinh, etc). Info below.

Solidarity,
David, Editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press


Chax Press is a 501(c)(3) charitable arts organization, and your donation is fully tax deductible.

Ways to donate:
1. Send us a check in the mail, to Chax Press, 411 N 7th Ave Ste 103, Tucson, AZ 85705-8388
2. Go to the “donate” page on our web site: http://chax.org/donate.htm
3. Go to your own Paypal account, and have a payment sent to us; you may even be able to arrange for regular monthly payments, to make this easy for you. Just $8 per month adds up to a $96 annual gift that helps immensely.
4. If you practice online banking, arrange through your online payment service for a gift to be sent to us. You can also arrange in this way to make a regular monthly or quarterly contribution.

charles alexander
chax press
chax@theriver.com
411 N 7th ave, suite 103
tucson arizona 85705
520 620 1626

Conference on Venzuela @ Evergreen

For those of you in the Olympia area, you know from say Olympia to, dunnno, NYC, please come to (at least) part of this important, and interesting conference. You can hop from there to the Rob Halpern reading (about a 4 min. walk across Evergreen's campus). A day of important discussions on the sociopolitical dimensions of contemporary Venezuela, then a poetry reading and discussion by a poet whose work is incredibly interested in hearing the logic of war, globalization, desire, need, and want. See you there if I see you that afternoon.

Conference on Venezuela,
El Salvador, May 29th-June 1st, 2009
Free,
No Charge! You are all invited to this exciting and educational
event!
Friday,
May 29th: What's
up with Venezuela? Evergreen
State
College,

4-6:
Movie: "Venezuela
Rising," 2006, documentary covering the rise of Chavez!
Seminar
2 A1105

7-9:30
"Venezuela and US
Intervention Keynote Address,"
Seminar II, E1107 at
Evergreen
Featuring
special guests:
Martín
Sánchez,
Cónsul General of
Venezuela, creator of Aporrea.org
Eva
Golinger,
author, "The Chavez
code: cracking U.S. intervention in
Venezuela"

Saturday,
May 30th:
Solidarity with the New Latin American Left: Evergreen,
Seminar 2,
D1107
10-12:
US Intervention and
Media Control panel with Eva
Golinger, Larry
Mosqueda and students from Venezuela
Program
12-1:
Lunch, Latin American
themed, Red Square

1-3:30:
21st Century
Socialism in Venezuela panel with Peter
Bohmer and students

3:45-5:30:
Latin American
Solidarity Panel with Martín
Sánchez,
CISPES and Portland
Central
America Solidarity Committee
(PCASC)

8-midnight:
Gallery opening
party! Ottos, Downtown Olympia, 116 Washington

Sunday,
May 31st: Art,
Participation and Popular Education: Art
All Day! Ottos (On
Washington, between 4th and State)
11-2:
Stenciling workshop and
crafts sale
2:30-5:
"Experiences of Latin
America," story telling, poetry, skits and more!

Monday,
June 1st: El Salvador's Historic Inauguration:
10-1:
Report back of
elections observers in El Salvador, live feed of inauguration,
Lecture Hall 1,
Evergreen
8
P.M.-late: Celebration Bash of FMLN Inauguration Victory! Ottos,
downtown

Sponsoring
groups, Latin American Solidarity Group, CISPES, Venezuela: Building
Economic
and Social Justice Program at Evergreen

For
more info, contact Peter Bohmer, bohmerp@evergreen.edu,
360 867-6431

Rob Halpern at Evergreen May 27th (spread ---> word)