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.

Skanky Possum @ 12th St. Books Presents: Steve McCaffery & Karen Mac Cormack

Tuesday, May 20 at 7 PM, 12th St. Books


*About the Poets*



Steve McCaffery is the author of more than 25 volumes of poetry and critical prose. He was a founding member of both the text-sound ensemble The Four Horsemen and (with bp Nichol) of the Toronto research Group.  His most recent books of poetry are The Basho Variations (Book Thug 2007) and Slightly Left of Thinking (Chax Press 2008).  He lives and teaches in Buffalo where he is David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters.





Born in Luanshya, Zambia, Karen Mac Cormack is the author of more than a dozen  books of poetry. Titles include Nothing by Mouth, Quill Driver, Quirks &  Quillets, At Issue and Vanity Release. Her poetry appears in a number of anthologies, among them: Another Language: Poetic Experiments in the USA and the UK,  Out of Everywhere: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America and the UK, Moving Borders (Three Decades of Innovative  Writing by Women),  The Art of Practice, and has been translated into  French, Portuguese, Swedish, and Norwegian. Of dual British/Canadian citizenship she currently lives in the USA and teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo.





*Venue*



12th Street Books in Austin TX, purveyors of used, rare and out of print books, is located at 827 West 12th Street, 2.5 blocks east of 12th & Lamar, between Shoal Creek and West.

that's what I'm talkin about

Can't wait to get my hands on this new mag.

Mimeo Mimeo is a forum for critical and cultural perspectives on the Mimeograph Revolution, Artists’ Books and the Literary Fine Press. Edited by Jed Birmingham and Kyle Schlesinger, this periodical features essays, interviews, images, correspondence, artifacts, manifestos, poems, and reflections on the graphic and material conditions of contemporary poetry and language arts.

Reading for Tom Clark recap

at Possum Ego

Dale reading from Clark's Threnody

The spot color is red...

"The spot color is red.

Red is the color of the ink that affixes the typographical ornament, the only typographical flourish of this book, to the cover. Red is the color of the thread that ties this tiny palmbook together...."

fine way to write about a book. I always enjoy whatever Geof Huth writes and how he writes it and the colors in which he writes it.

HANDS by Tom Raworth

quick poem

The Xanax

before an emergency

take one

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

An Actual Me in an Actual Kansas

I've never really been in the midwest of our America. But I will be reading at Anne Boyer's and Robert Baumann's poetry series An Actual Kansas at the 6 Gallery in Lawrence, KS Thursday at 7pm.  I'll be reading with Lawrence local Cyrus Console. I'll be hanging out for a few days so if you are in the area send me a note and let's get a beer.

reviews of Effing books

Nicholas Manning reviews John Crouse's Obstructs / Constitutes and Dale Smith's Black Stone here and here (respectively) at the new issue of Galatea Resurrects.