effing blog

And we're back.

Hello Citizens.

Took a much needed breather from press work and book slinging these past few weeks / months  and have been laying low, living large, hanging with friends,  not quitting smoking, lovin, steaming mussels, printing,  reading, poetrying, neglecting, ignoring, supporting, hiding, loafing, bathing, braying, driving all over this city  and fighting the police.

Ramping up with the good work now and proclamate labor and salvation in the form of collectible, sexable literary pap from the effing press to your mailboxes and hands. Your pretty pretty hands.

The summer was slow and dusty. Book orders and printing jobs were little and the money was none. It's still dusty in central T but the orders and printing work are starting to flow in again (and out) so there is fuel for the engine of bookmaking. Praise Ganesh. Fearhimlovehim.

The effing website will be updated shortly as well.

In the works (to repeat myself from months ago):

An Amiri Baraka essay in booklet form called "Ed Dorn & The Western World" (co-published with Skanky Possum Press).

A two poem flip book by Marcia Roberts.

a new collection from Hoa Nguyen called Kiss a Bomb Tattoo.

a wry beaut from Dale Smith called Cosmograph.

and finally, the David Meltzer collection Angelize that has been difficult (for no good reason) to produce.

Currently working on some fine printing for the upcoming Frank Stanford Literary Festival in Fayetteville, AR -- a broadside of a Frank poem as well as the program cover, both designed by Katy Henriksen of Cannibal. Just about ready to order the plates and papers.

I'll be at the festival as well and am looking forward to the poems/poets and the Ozarks in autumnal chaos.

Finishing up a piece of mine own lingua to be published as booklet in this year's Dusie Kollective chapbook swap. Punching the keys. Staring into space. Poet labor.

My bud Richard Owens (of Damn the Caesars and Punch Press) has a new book out from BlazeVox in Buffalo, NY called Delaware Memoranda.  It was my privilege to design the covers for this fantastic book of poems. Check it oot.

Also, the craftmaster Friedrich Kerksieck of Small Fires Press has put out a second edition of my poem Some Bridges Migrate with artwork by Austin artist Cherie Weaver. Bound and letterpress printed as nicely as the first edition, but for this run Friedrich The Wizard has made the cover paper with his own two hands. And it's great, this Friedrich-made paper.  Supporthimpraisehim.

There is more news and talking from our heads. There will be more.

The dow is down but not you.

save this shop

http://users.bestweb.net/~bpress/misc/intro.html

gutenberg

http://www.dontpressme.com/video/gutenberg.html

one year ago

carving out a block in the old place about a year ago. pic courtesy of jaybird.

rogue blargue

Been working the hands around new effing projects, like Patrick Herron's Lester book Be Somebody. Lester is a sock puppet. The edition is printed and stacked and now we're binding the hell out of it. Release is immanent. Also we're proofing out the new effing magazine with editor Chris Vitiello and carving up blocks to use on its cover printing. It's a very

North Carolina

effing month.

Be Somebody copies under the cinder blocks.

We're taking some letterpress jobs too and have been banging out sweet two color prints for the U of Texas Writing Center and also for individuals to be wedded and for babies that have been borned. And coasters. Here's some scans of some of the UT Writing Center flyers printed - though the scans don't do the printing much justice:

prints are 7x10 on Crane's Lettra pearl stock, printed on the C&P 8x12. Designed by Suloni Roberts.

We've acquired a small AB Dick offset press and are tearing it down for cleaning and repair and hope to have it operational in the coming weeks. We'll use it for flooding paper stock with color and for underprinting on effing book covers and title pages and endpapers and who knows what else. We just need a little platemaker and we're good to go with the who knows what else.

We'll be in the studio all weekend making the paper fly.  If you are in

Austin

this Sunday this looks pretty interesting:

And if you're in San Francisco TONIGHT there is this with Austin's Hoa Nguyen and others:

Friday, April 4
Three Vietnamese Poets: Nguyen Do, Hoa Nguyen, and Truong Tran
In celebration of the recently published anthology Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions), three Vietnamese-American contributors will read their poetry. Nguyen Do who edited and translated Black Dog, Black Night with Paul Hoover, Hoa Nguyen, and Trong Tran. This groundbreaking anthology presents the true picture of a poetry that had been suppressed in

Vietnam

due to Soviet-influenced censorship. A discussion period will follow the reading.

and also this weekend in San Francisco, check out my bud's work at this wacky show:

Interactive, crank, prank, word house cosy house treehouse with a white picket fence… Sustained Simulacrum Quip is a collaborative installation piece that invites the audience to play with the monsters in their own backyard. Enter an environment where perhaps you are in control, perhaps not. Where you are not necessarily cogniscent of how your actions may play out and can only experiment…

after Kansas

Home from the plains. I like the plains! Yay Kansas, yay. The people are mild and good looking and aren't too aggressive about their bbq being the best in the world (I didn't try it) and I was treated well for a Texan. I can't and would never complain about Kansas. Anne Boyer is the hostess with the mostest and Robert Baumann, the co-curator of An Actual Kansas Reading Series, is a cute baby chick (though he's a cutter, aren't you Robert). The other reader, Cyrus Console, is a great poet and was introduced by Ken Irby, another great poet. The people and the venue were lovely, the weather was crisp and clear. I shan't wait too long to go back to Kansas. And I got to go to the Hammer Press studios which was amazing. The printers/proprietors, Brady and Lyndsay, gave us a tour and took some time to talk and swap letterpress stories and histories. Kansas City, I'll not soon forget ye.

Here's Anne's brief write up of the reading. There are links to some pictures of the reading and our evening collaging as well.

I spent an hour or so at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art where I saw wonderful things and where wonderful things happened to me which I can't rightly explain.  An hour should have been a full day. Next time.

Some images

Anne Boyer's red shoes

Italian sculpture whose name I forget

press room at Hammer Press

Hammer Press posters just printed

me, high on ink and paper at Hammer Press (Brady and Lindsay in the background)

hallway in the Bloch Building at NAMA

Effing Press...

...is now open to custom design and printing of stationary and most things smallish and papery. any run size, single or multiple color. you have a design already? then we are that much closer to turning your job around for you. like that olde tymey look, feel, and smell? come see me and let us talk in olde tymey modes of paper and inks and textures.