April’s Good Stuff

News & new things from/with/about poets & writers in the Porkbelly family.

 

Pray, Pray, Pray by E. Kristin Anderson (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Set the Garden on Fire by Chen Chen (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Love Me, Anyway by Minadora Macheret (cover artist: Sharmon Davidson)

How Darkness Enters a Body by Sarah Nichols

Apples or Pomegranates (cover art: Anita Olivia Koester)

Dry Spell by Patrick Kindig (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Blackbird Whitetail Redhand (cover: Nicci Mechler)

The Girl by Donna Vorreyer (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road by Amorak Huey (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

Found Footage by Maggie Woodward (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Dreamland for Keeps by Sarah Nichols (cover artist: Nicci Mechler)

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Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, 2018) & How Darkness Enters a Body (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Sarah Nichols » @onibaba37

• One of Sarah’s Elizabeth Short poems appears in Drunk Monkeys: “Elizabeth Short Visits the Black Lodge.” Interested in more poems like this? Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, 2018) has released this month—it’s a whole chapbook of erasure poems.

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Found Footage (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Maggie Woodward

• 5 poems are up at inferior planets!
• Anna Sandy Elrod reviews FOUND FOOTAGE over at Real Pants!

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Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Chen Chen » chenchenwrites.com

• Congratulations to Chen Chen on accepting the 2018 – 2020 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University!
• Chen’s “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party” up at poem-a-day. You can hear him read it here!
• When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions) won the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.

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Love Me, Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Minadora Macheret

• Congratulations to Minadora Macheret on winning the Justin Q. Owens Convention Theme: Creative Writing award from Sigma Tau Delta’s 2018 Convention!

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Apples or Pomegranates (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Anita Olivia Koester » anitaoliviakoester.com

• Anita’s manuscript Cartography of Grief was a runner-up in the Dorset Prize (selected by Dana Levin via Tupelo Press).
• “Cartography of a Missing Body” & “Cartography of a Keyhole” (two father poems) in the new issue if Up North Lit.

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Blackbird Whitetail Redhand (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Lindsay Lusby » lindsaylusby.com

• Lindsay’s manuscript Catechesis: a postpastoral was a finalist in the Dorset Prize (selected by Dana Levin via Tupelo Press).
• Blackbird Whitetail Redhand was released this month! The chapbook is handbound (Japanese stab binding) and features letterpress covers. » order

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A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Amorak Huey » amorakhuey.net

• “Captain Picard Teaches My Son to Throw a Football” is up at Beech Street Review.
• Congratulations to Amorak Huey for winning the 2018 Vern Rutsala Prize. His book Seducing the Asparagus Queen is due out in late-summer via Cloudbank Books.

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Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Patrick Kindig

• Patrick Kindig reads three poems at The Poets Weave.

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The Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Donna Vorreyer

• a new piece, “Painting Which is in Fact Not a Sky” is up in Juxtaprose.

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Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the Middle of the Night (Porkbelly Press, 2015) by E. Kristin Anderson » www.ekristinanderson.com

• A new essay up at Cotton Xenomorph in their manifestos series: “Anderson’s Rules for Writing Found Poetry.”
• EKA’s essay “Everything Could Never Be This Real” is up at Memoir Mixtapes!

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Porkbelly’s January News

(from our poets & authors—readings, happenings, reviews, books, and news)

Rooed by Thirst // Tina Mozelle Braziel (cover art: Kathleen Piercefield)

Feeding the Dead by M. Brett Gaffney (cover art: Mary Chiaramonte)

Found Footage by Maggie Woodward (cover: Nicci Mechler)

How Darkness Enters a Body by Sarah Nichols

My Heart in Aspic by Sonya Vatomsky (cover: Shannon Perry)

Poems for Ivan by Sara Adams (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Pray, Pray, Pray by E. Kristin Anderson (cover: Nicci Mechler)

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Rooted by Thirst (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Tina Mozelle Braziel

• Tina has won the 2017 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry! Anhinga Press will publish her debut full length collection Known by Salt.

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My Heart in Aspic (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Sonya Vatomsky » @coolniceghost

• Sonya writes for haute macabre : “Dr. Bloodsucker: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Pet Leech“

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Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, 2018) & How Darkness Enters a Body (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Sarah Nichols » @onibaba37

• Sarah’s essay is up at The RS 500: “#157: Joy Division, ‘Closer’ (1980)“
• erasure poem “Little Sister” appears in Calamus’ 15th issue.

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Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by M. Brett Gaffney « blog

•  Feeding the Dead is nominated for an Elgin Award (2018).

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Found Footage (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Maggie Woodward

• Found Footage was released this month!

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Poems for Ivan (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Sara Adams » kartoshkaaaaa.com

• Sara’s erasure appears in Calamus’ 15th issue.

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Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the Middle of the Night (Porkbelly Press, 2015) by E. Kristin Anderson » www.ekristinanderson.com

• EKA’s erasure poem “No grotesque culmination of witchcraft” appears in Calamus’ 15th issue.

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Sugared Water 005

a detail of a cover with end-papers

covers drying on the table

Sugared Water‘s fifth issue is bound in a hand-pulled print cover, this time a combination of screenprinting and letterpress. SW005 contains poetry & creative nonfiction essays. 80 pages, $12. Limited to an edition of 100. » more about this issue

Design, printing & binding by printmaker Nicci Mechler.

contributors

E. Kristin Anderson, Catherine Arra, Tammy Bendetti, Alyse Bensel, Sheila Black, Ariella Carmell, Susana H. Case, Su Cho, A.E. Clark, James Croteau, Carlina Duan, Patrick James Errington, Wren Hanks, Sonja Johanson, Eve Kenneally, Michal Leibowitz, Minadora Macheret, Laura K. McRae, Natalia Mujadzik, Tanya Muzumdar, JoDean Nicolette, Susan Rich, Thadra Sheridan, Shakeema Smalls, and Amanda Stovicek.

August Bacon

(News & happenings from/with/including/for our poets&writers)

Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Sarah Ann Winn (cover: Angie Reed Garner)

My Heart in Aspic by Sonya Vatomsky (cover: Shannon Perry)

bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women by Robin Turner (cover: Anita Olivia Koester)

Set the Garden on Fire by Chen Chen (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Poems for Ivan by Sara Adams (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Pray, Pray, Pray by E. Kristin Anderson (cover: Nicci Mechler)

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Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Sarah Ann Winn

• Portage (Sundress Publications), Sarah’s e-chap, was featured on cahoodaloodaling.
• Curious about Winn’s chapbooks & inspiration for them? You can check out an interview over at Tepid Autumn.
• Haunting the Last House on Holland Island is available for pre-order and is due to release September 6, 2016!

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A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (forthcoming, 2016)
by Amorak Huey

• an interview on The Sundress Blog about writing routine & poetry!
• “The Oaks at the Edge of the Driveway” appears in Stirring. **
• “The Ditch Around the Edge of the Garden” appears in DIALOGIST. **
• “The Barn at the End of the Path” and “The Rabbit Cages Under the Grape Arbor” appear in The Collapsar. **

**poems from Huey’s Porkbelly Press chapbook.

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My Heart in Aspic (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Sonya Vatomsky » sonyavatomsky.com

• Sonya’s essay on otherness, straddling culture/identity, fantasy, the politics of forgetting, language, and other kinds of things: “Mothertonguetied: The Fantasy of Belonging.”

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bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Robin Turner

• bindweed & crow poison was released 31 August 2016!
  

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Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Chen Chen » chenchenwrites.com

• Chen’s poem “Ode to Reading Rimbaud in Lubbock, Texas” is up over on Buzzfeed!

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Poems for Ivan (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Sara Adams » kartoshkaaaaa.com

• review of Poems for Ivan at Yellow Chair Review (via Eric A. Cline).

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Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by E. Kristin Anderson » ekristinanderson.com

• EKA is judging the Jane Lumley Prize via Hermeneutic Chaos Press. Reading Sept 1 – Nov 1.

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Bacon in May, May Bacon (Contributor News)

My Heart in Aspic by Sonya Vatomsky (cover: Shannon Perry)

What’s pink & shiny / what’s dark & hard (stack of books)

The Eighth Phrase, LB Williams (open edition cover)

Set the Garden on Fire by Chen Chen (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Dry Spell by Patrick Kindig (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Poems for Ivan by Sara Adams (cover: Nicci Mechler)

 

My Heart in Aspic (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Sonya Vatomsky // @coolniceghost

• An interview with Sonya on My Heart in Aspic over on Speaking of Marvels. Things mentioned include bilingual poeting (writing), language, cauldrons, beakers, “folk medicine” vs “actual medicine,” a grandparents’ kitchen, bearings, and teeth. Always teeth.

If you ever look up how to brew kombucha at home, you’ll find instructions so obsessed with cleanliness that it borders on the absurd. Clean everything with bleach! You’re going to die! And so on. Meanwhile, my grandparents made kombucha in their tiny USSR apartments where I guarantee you there was an insufficiently sterile environment and, well, people have been making kombucha in Russia and China for ages before that as well. There’s a lot of scholarly work being done that indicates much of our “folk medicine” vs “actual medicine” beliefs originate in the willful exclusion of women from science. And both love and grief are feminine-coded emotions. At its root, My Heart in Aspic is really about me getting my bearings after a sexual assault, and that period of my life felt very feminine, in a weird way. I’m non-binary, and that was the single time when I briefly truly felt like a woman.

• You can find some of their new work in issue #12 of Fuck Art, Let’s Dance! (Nostrovia Press, May 2016). And, you know what? You can listen to it too. An excerpt from “Mourning Hair, Don’t Care:”

… it’ll be better this time or at least
it’ll be different and we’re somewhat
optimistic because who isn’t when
the wind goes warm and one’s chest
opens up and anticipation runs
impulse control off the road…

• Sonya’s latest essay (this one on sleep paralysis) over at Dirge Magazine. It’s called “Riding with the Witch: Anxiety and Archetypes in Sleep Paralysis.”

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What’s pink & shiny / what’s dark & hard (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Sarah B. Boyle // @pyrrhicspondee

• An interview with Sarah on  What’s pink & shiny / what’s dark & hard at Speaking of Marvels. Things mentioned: secrets, art, accomplice vs ally, abortion, lacunae, persistence, and the importance of good teachers.

As to when I finally wrote about the abortion–god I’m so slow. I’m consistently writing about things that happened about 5 years prior. (Aside from these heartbreaking little prose poems I’ve been writing about teaching, which seem to pour out of me unfiltered and within hours of the events that prompt them.)  I suspect I need the distance to turn things into art–into an object outside myself that I can manipulate. // more at Speaking of Marvels

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The Eighth Phrase (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by L. B. Williams // letterstovirginiawoolf.com

• A review of L.B. Williams’ The Eighth Phrase at Quill & Parchment. (Reviewer: Ed Bennett.) This is a native New Yorker’s thorough response to these poems.

…this is a small book but it is dense with the poetry of one coming of age against the polyglot sounds of a great city. Do not let the size of the book deceive you. The imagery is almost narcotic and the phrasing speaks directly to the soul. L.B. Williams has fashioned a fantastic book of poems from her memories as well as her fine poetic technique. // more at Quill & Parchment

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Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Chen Chen // @chenchenwrites

• If you’re into it, you can read some new poems in The Adroit Journal!
• We just read Chen Chen’s Kissing the Sphinx (Two of Cups Press, 2016) and it’s pretty awesome. $12 incl. shipping from one of our fav. small presses.

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Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Patrick Kindig // pdkindig.wordpress.com

• His micro chapbook was just released! Fresh off the press, all these poems: DRY SPELL.

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Poems for Ivan (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Sara Adams // kartoshkaaaaa.com

• Though it’s not due out until next month, Sara’s micro chapbook received this awesome blurb review:

Sara Adams’ Poems for Ivan is a modern version of Persephone’s tale. When she leads you down the “black, barbed-wired path” of Ukraine past gangs of wild dogs or into the underground monastery, you can’t turn away. You will want to linger with Ivan in the dark magic of this book.

— Janeen Pergrin Rastall, author of In the Yellowed House, Objects May Appear Closer and co-author of Heart Radicals.

Centralia (Sarah Gzemski)

Centralia by Sarah Gzemski (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Centralia is a mixed genre chapbook, blending personal essay, photographs, and poems into a narrative of family, silence, admiration, and regret. It’s very much about things unseen or only hinted at, told against the backdrop of a small town in Pennsylvania, a community resting on a thin crust of earth spanning fire. This is a chapbook well suited to the image-rich, surreal imagery of an underground burn, rooted in a sense of place and colored by a veil of smoke. Just when you think you know what this narrative’s about, another fissure opens. | available from our shop

This chapbook measures approximately 6.25 x 5.25 inches. Its cover is printed via inkjet on Epson matte photo paper. Each book is handbound & trimmed.

Excerpt from “Attempt to Stop the Fire 1:”

They figured they’d dig it out. Get their shovels around the fire, send the men into the caverns, get them to start mining again. They figured the fire wasn’t in a hurry, that it would stay put while they hacked away at the fuel around it. But the fire taunted, always moving ahead of everything they cleared, growling. Machines only made things worse: they pierced the shaft, let in air that fanned the flames, wind a giant bellows in the black-walled tunnel. The team was only allowed to work from 8 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday, as though fire could not run rampant on weekends, holidays, or the middle of the night.

About the author:

Sarah Gzemski is a poet and nonfiction writer originally from Pennsylvania. Currently living in Mesilla, New Mexico, she is the Managing Editor of Noemi Press and is working toward her MFA in Poetry at New Mexico State University. Some of her work has appeared recently in The Adirondack Review and Bone Bouquet.

About the cover artist:

Nicci splits her time between exploring, telling tales, and painting girls with inky tattoos. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with a pack of roomies & rescue animals specializing in troublemaking and joy. | @damnredshoes | damnredshoes.wordpress.com

 

Emily

art inspired by Emily, in process (artist: Nicci Mechler)

December (1830) is the month in which both Emily Dickinson and Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson were born. For that reason, we’ve decided to read for the anthology (mostly) in December. Dec 5, 2014 – Jan 5, 2015.

Emily is a collection of poetry&prose inspired by the works, life, and letters of Emily Dickinson. The anthology is to be split into several sections, each loosely clustered around one of the major themes&image in her works. We’re looking for all kinds of work for this anthology, be it poetry, prose, creative nonfiction, artwork, doodles, notes, short critical essays, illustrated narratives, comics, or illustrations. Full guidelines can be found on our Anthologies page.

• 3 to 5 poems (no more than 10 pages)
• 3 micro & flash fictions (no more than 1,500 words total)
• personal essay & excerpts no longer than 2,000 words
• short essays (no more than 2,000 words)
• up to 5 artworks, illustrations, comic pages, scans of notes/sketches, photos (JPGs)

We request FNASR & the right to archive your work on our SW or PP website (Archival Rights).

Payment is made in one limited edition copy of the resulting anthology.
If you have a website, and would like it linked, we’ll do so from the contributor section of our site, along with a bio.

(listed at Duotrope)