Introducing Catfish Press & past simple

From editor/publisher Jim Goar:

past simple, a new online rag, is out and ready to be seen. You can find prose and poetry by Richard Froude, Pirooz Kalayeh, Matthew Langley, Dorthea Lasky, Tao Lin, Reb Livingston, Farid Matuk, Gina Myers, Logan Ryan Smith, Tyler Smith, Aaron Tieger, Gabriella Torres & art by Stacy Elaine Dacheux.

Poking around on the site (good poems in this first issue!), I note that Jim has also started up Catfish Press, through which he will publish "only books he loves," in addition to past simple. First up will be The Margaret Thatcher Trilogy by Richard Froude (December), then in spring 2007 this is affront you pig by Logan Ryan Smith and Letters Toward Jim by Matthew Langley.

Tags: Catfish Press, past simple

Cherries, cherries everywhere: A Slice of Cherry Pie

Ivy has announced that she'll be hosting an online release party tomorrow for the UK version of A Slice of Cherry Pie. Details here.

And I am making books today too. You can follow along at the new DIY Publishing Flickr group. (Click the image up there, or the link in the sidebar.)

You can still preorder the US version here, and the UK edition will be available tomorrow here.

Tags: Half Empty/Half Full, Private Press

A several-legged creature peeked from 'neath my dream . . .

. . . & gave me to understand I'd forgotten (so far) to tell you about these two new chaps, which are one, Monsters (which being by K. Silem Mohammad I have read in a less deluxe proto-version & which ROCKS) & two, little ones, which I have not seen but being by Anne Boyer has been ordered.



So now you know.

And here's where you get them.

Tags: Abraham Lincoln

Hello, says Alice Blue. (She's 4.)

Poetry by Jon Leon, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Jennifer Firestone, Crag Hill, Della Watson, W. B. Keckler, William Allegrezza, Miriam Pirone, Edward Smallfield, Louis E. Bourgeois & Kristy Bowen.

Prose by Sara Levine, David Gianatasio, Kristen Iskandrian, Greg Mulcahy, Colleen Frakes & Benjamin Buchholz.

here

Tags: Alice Blue

Carve 7 is out now

CARVE 7

Ruth Lepson
Kate Greenstreet
Michael Carr
John Coletti
Tyler Carter
Matvei Yankelevich
Interview: Stacy Szysmaszek and Erica Kaufman
Cover by Mark Yakich

44 pp. $5 here

Tags: Carve

In answer to your question What shall I read?

. . . Galatea responds with many lovely suggestions, in this her third issue.

Seriously, Galatea Resurrects is amazing. I'm adding it to the sidebar since it always includes so many chapbook, DIY, and micropress reviews. It would wear out my mouse to point to them all, but for instance, Ivy Alvarez reviews 7 (seven!) chaps in this issue, Allen Bramhall reviews Mark Lamoureux's Film Poems, Jon Leon reviews three more chaps, & much much more.

Tags: Galatea Resurrects

A note

Of course I'm aware the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center is today. (I witnessed the towers fall without the intervening screen of a teevee, standing on a pier in Long Island City, Queens; I'll never forget it as long as I breathe.) And I realize some people will chose to mark the occasion with solemnity. But personally, the best thing I can think to do in memory of such destruction is to celebrate creation. Thus, I point and go "yay."

Cy Press & Transmission: Two new chaps by Brandon Brown

"Hello" from Memoirs of My Nervous Illness

To order your copy of Brandon Brown's Memoirs from My Nervous Illness from Cy Press, send check or money order for $7 to the address here.

And publisher/editor Logan Ryan Smith at Transmission Press has also published a new book by Brown, 908 - 1078.

This is the second chapbook to be released from TRANSMISSION and is printed in an edition of 150 copies. 908 - 1078 is 20 pages, letterhalf in size, staple-bound, and printed on linen paper.

You can purchase 908 - 1078 by Brandon Brown for $3.50 thru the PayPal button here.

From the poet: 908 – 1078 represents a literal translation of the last 170 lines of the ancient tragedy The Persians by Aeschylus.

Tags: Cy Press, Transmission Press

Inch #1 is now available

From Ross White at Bull City Press:

Inch #1 is now available!

Featuring poetry by Ellen Bush, Melissa Eleftherion, Michael McFee, Chris Tonelli & Laura Li Ziegler; fiction by Liliana V. Blum & Will Rodriguez; and translations by Toshiya Kamei.

Inch, the magazine of short poems and microfiction, is looking for keen poems for its second issue. If you love small poems, or even if you don't love them but you happen to have written a few, Inch would love to see your work. Check our submission guidelines and send us the sassiest of your one- to nine-line poems.

Tags: Inch, Bull City

The power of etcetera: announcements!

From Justin Marks at Kitchen Press:

Kitchen Press will post poetry reviews at this new review site.

There is nothing posted as yet, but I'm hoping that will change soon, which brings me to my point. If any of you have written reviews of poetry books, chapbooks or periodicals and would like them to appear on Kitchen Press Reviews, please do not hesitate to contact me. (justinamarks [at] gmail [dot] com)

If you have a book you would like reviewed on the site, also please do not hesitate to contact me. I will either review it myself or try to find someone else to do so. Thanks.

From Kathleen Rooney of Rose Metal Press:

We are currently seeking submissions of novels-in-verse and linked narrative poetry collections to be published in 2007.

The deadline for manuscripts is September 30, 2006 , and submissions may be emailed, beginning now, to rosemetalpress at gmail dot com. Since the genre is such a flexible one, we are not insisting on a page limit, and will consider multiple submissions by the same author.

If you are unsure whether your ms qualifies as a novel-in-verse or a linked narrative collection, please query us at the above email address.

Some examples of novels-in-verse/linked narrative collections include Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, The Emperor's Babe by Bernardine Evaristo, Skygirl by Rosemary Griggs, and Madoc: A Mystery by Paul Muldoon.

If no suitable manuscript is found, RMP reserves the right to refrain from publishing a collection.

There is no entry fee.

Rose Metal Press has also been added to the sidebar links. Welcome!

From Sarah Nicholls at the Center for Book Arts:

Please join us for our Fall Open House next weekend and enjoy Book Arts Demonstrations by Delphi Basilicato, Ana Cordeiro, Beatrice Coron, Gavin Dovey, and Amber McMillan; lamination Ritual Performance with Ken Montgomery and Andrea Beeman; and in the gallery, work by 2006 Teen Cultural Autobiography participants Lizz Cole, Rosalinda Lett, Alex Needham and Aaron Small will be on view, as well as Mutilated/Cultivated *Environments (your last chance to see the show before it closes), and the Featured Artist Project, Rita Valley An Entirely Idiosyncratic ABC.

Saturday, September 21, 2006. 1 to 5pm
The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor
Between Broadway and 6th Avenue
N, R to 28th Street and Broadway
F to 23rd Street and 6th Avenue
1 or 9 to 28th Street and 7th Avenue

Open to the public. Admission is FREE.

Tags: Kitchen Press, Rose Metal Press, Center for Book Arts

New from Cy Gist: Three new releases & a special blog offer

From editor/publisher Mark Lamoureux:

"Summer's gone, but a lot goes on forever"--Leonard Cohen

Cy Gist Press is happy to announce the release of 3 new chapbooks as we bid summer farewell and stumble into autumn and everything after.

SPECIAL FOR BLOG READERS: Order all 4 recent Cy Gist Press titles for $20 ($5 each, normally $6) and I will throw in a copy of Another Night, the first Cy Gist Press chapbook for free. There are only a few copies of Another Night left, so act fast!

[Look! A handy, irresistible PayPal button!]

____________________________



Exertions
by Scott Glassman
(20 pp., sewn binding) $6

Scott Glassman's first chapbook offers simultaneously alien and quotidian glosses on the perils of existing alone and with others. Scott's take on the prose poem operates by way of arpeggios of contrapuntal phrases threatening to tear the form apart while giving them surprising rhythmic balance. For ordering and a sample poem go here.


Caracas Notebook
by Guillermo Parra
(20 pp., saddle-stapled with linen binding, B&W photographs) $6

Guillermo Parra's lyric paean to the city and the dramatically changing face of Venezuela at the beginning of this century is rife with exile and nostalgia. These are poems from between--between languages, cultures, identities and forms. Sparse, objectivist-inspired poems are mingled with direct but enigmatic prose reminiscent, to my mind, of W.G. Sebald. Like Sebald's, these poems are homesick for a point of origin which may or may not have ever existed. With black-and-white photographs of Caracas by Isabel Parra. For ordering and a sample poem go here.



(Please note image is a reproduction of the mirrored cover which cannot be reproduced on the computer screen)

Face Time
(22 pp. Sewn Binding, B&W photographs, mirrored cover) $6

What do Paris Hilton, Al Pacino, Hilda Doolittle, Charlize Theron, Marcello Mastroianni and a quivering, self-eviscerated blob have in common? Find out in Face Time, an anthology of poets responding to stills from films. Featuring work by Joe Hall, Craig Perez, Noah Falck, Phil Crippen, Matina L. Stamatakis, Francois Luong, Brian Lucas, Nicole Mauro, Jessica Smith, G.L. Ford, Mark Lamoureux, Christina Strong, Michael Carr, Sandra Simonds, John Mulrooney, Brenda Iijima & Christopher Rizzo.

To order and for a sample poem and image go here.

Tags: Cy Gist

Anchorite Press: New site, new releases & online archives

Good news from Chris Rizzo--Anchorite Press now has an online home . . .  and three new releases: 15 Poems in Sets of 5, a chapbook by Catherine Meng; "Fickle Hill," a broadside poem by Joseph Massey; & After Rilke by Aaron Tieger.




Chris has also scanned and posted the covers and production details for all the (elegant, classic) Anchorite books & broadsides to date!

In an effort to supply interested folks with some sort of web presence, I've designed this blog, which is linked (see sidebar) to a fairly extensive archive. Until I actually sat down to confront the notion of putting together an archive, I hadn't realized how much work Anchorite had done in the past, especially in 2004. Unfortunately, there is a general lack of images for very early broadsides, which were called "monographs" for a time. I hadn't expected Anchorite to grow as it has, and I subsequently gave away practically all of the early projects.

Still a work in progress, this blog will eventually carry news about the press and forthcoming publications, information on publishing, and hopefully some visual documentaries on how Anchorite Publications are put together. I'll also post calls for work here, too, so check back from time to time.

Cool. (Here's to many more, C.) Write to anchorite dot press at gmail dot com for ordering info.

Tags: Anchorite

Tree-Free options by Creative Paper Wales: Sheep Poo Paper

Creative Paper Wales offers papers made from recycled materials via methods "designed to live up to the highest environmental and quality standards possible." Those methods include collecting, boiling, and pounding the cellulose byproducts of the digestive cycle of Welsh sheep: sheep poo, in other words. And the waste from their rendering of this, um, waste becomes a rich liquid fertilizer. How awesome is that?

As every craftsperson will tell you, it all begins by using only the very finest materials. We take great care to collect super-fresh sheep poo from the beautiful (and rainy) mountains of rural Wales and take it back to the mill, situated in southern Snowdonia. We don't just make Sheep Poo Paper™ and for our other papers we use waste paper, rag and textile off-cuts and just about anything else we can think of that has good length cellulose fibers in it. Of course, we don't use tree - we like trees.

Their website's really fun. Not only can you read more about how Sheep Poo paper is made, you can collaborate on one-of a kind papers, show off your DIY skills in their "What to Do with Poo" contest,, and of course shop.

Environmentally speaking, the shipping-related impact of ordering this paper from overseas may outweigh the benefits of its tree-free origin. But perhaps some enterprising papermakers Stateside will follow suit. (We have sheep, don't we?) And I figured Ivy could at least use the tip.

(via BoingBoing)

Tags: recycled, paper, environmental.

[Note: I'm just starting to add tags, so these aren't quite as useful as they eventually will be. Your patience please.]

Toward a shared storefront . . . or two! & a DIY Flickr group!

I'm a little behind. If you've sent me an announcement to post in the last week or so, I promise to get it up soon. I got slammed after my vacation and haven't quite caught up.

However . . . I've been working on the shared storefront at Lulu a bit, and Amazon has just introduced a feature that will work as a shared storefront there too.



There are still problems/limitations in each environment. In the Amazon aStore, right now I can only display 9 Featured Books and 1 Featured Press (because of the way their category page works--messy, inaccuate keyword searches, this is the best I can do at the moment). I'll rotate those, I guess. At Lulu, I can add whatever I like by content ID number, but the byline (author name) doesn't show up, and I can't categorize the contents of the store except in a strictly heirarchical fashion (by page-rank numbers I assign; I'll go alpha by author name or press. There is a search function, and I can use the group blog to highlight new releases, etc. . . . once I have time to hack the templates.) Both stores are still beta-test versions, so I'm supplying feedback to both Amazon & Lulu, asking for the improvements we'd like to see.

Anyway, these are now officially coming along. So if you've got micropress or self-published poetry books available through either Amazon or Lulu,* let me know. (Content IDs for Lulu and ISBNS for Amazon would be most helpful. Ideally Amazon books should have cover art uploaded. See their help pages for how to do that--"customer-uploaded images" won't display. And in Lulu, consider filling out your book descriptions. Otherwise not much beyond the cover art shows up on the main page.)

Once they're cleaned up and built a little better, I can work out a way to make them display here in popup windows or inline frames or something equally fancy. For right now, I've added a DIY Storefront section to the right sidebar. Click & be merry.

Yr suggestions, product lists, etc. more than welcome.

Update: Jessica set up a group Flickr pool. Cool.



Another update: There's a forum devoted to discussing the beta version of the Amazon aStores (if yer interested). Lots of people asking for about the ability to choose specific items by ISBN or product ID (instead of clumsy too-inclusive keyword searches). I tried a couple of workarounds that didn't really workaround. Anyway, lots of folks asking means that they'll probably implement it . . . eventually. For now I will just have to rotate 9 featured items and one featured press (each month, I guess?). I can still make a list of things tho, to put in when they get this sorted out, so hit me.

* I know: these stores leave out everybody who isn't already on Lulu or Amazon, but they're better than nothing, & so far they're free to build. Does Etsy have a similar Group or Community function? That could be a way to include more DIYers. I haven't used Etsy yet. Keep thinking!

Tags: shared storefront, Amazon, Lulu