The Split-Decision Anthology from Rope-A-Dope

Here!

Mini-Tour

11/7 Yes, Reading! in Albany, NY w/ Janaka Stucky

11/8 Somewhere in Vermont w/ Janaka Stucky

11/9 Slope Editions Reading Series in Turners Falls, MA w/ Janaka Stucky & Brian Foley

A Review of NO THEATER

Thanks, Chris!

ZERO LBS.

Gravitron reviewed at the BIG RED & SHINY

AFFECTS OF GRAVITY: Gravitron at the Topsfield Fair Oct. 2-4

Experience anti-gravity art at the Topsfield Fair in October 2009!

Affects of Gravity

October 2-4th

Topsfield Agriculture Fair, Topsfield, MA

Join artist Andi Sutton and poet Chris Tonelli for Affects of Gravity a sound installation that will take place on a Gravitron amusement park ride at the Topsfield Fair in Topsfield, MA, on Oct. 2 – 4th.

When: Friday, October 2 (4-10 PM)

Saturday, October 3 & Sunday, October 4th, 2009 (10 AM - 10 PM)

In this collaborative intervention, Sutton and Tonelli present a sound installation of poetry and gravity experienced while riding the centripetal-force-induced anti-gravity amusement park ride, the Gravitron. This project, sponsored by the Council for the Arts at MIT, brings riders into the metaphoric world of the Gravitron through a soundscape of amusement park field recordings and poems narrated by the Gravitron itself – stories of the Midway, its riders, and seasonal cyclical labor. The poems, selections from Tonelli’s forthcoming chapbook For People Who Like Gravity And Other People (Rope-a-Dope Press 2010), draw upon this age-old symbol of American entertainment and consumer distraction. The Gravitron asserts the trapped cycle of its existence and the isolation that occurs when the ride, the amusement, and the distraction, finally stops.

Get on… Lean against the wall…

Ticket information and transportation

RSVP to reserve a free ticket for the Gravitron and discounted entry to the Topsfield Fair ($8) on October 2nd, 3rd, or 4th.

A free, round-trip bus ride, departing from Kendall Square, Cambridge, is available on Saturday, Oct. 3rd along with the Gravitron and discounted Topsfield Fair tickets. Space is limited – RSVP soon to reserve a spot. The last day to RSVP is September 25th.

For tickets and/or a spot on the bus, contact Andi Sutton (andi.sutton@gmail.com)


Collaborative team:

Andi Sutton is an artist whose work explores the ways performance art methodology can be used to create alternative models for community and social engagement. She pursues an interdisciplinary collaborative art practice and is involved in the National Bitter Melon Council (www.bittermelon.org), Platform2: Art and Social Engagmeent (http://www.janemarsching.com/platform2/), among others. Her work has appeared locally and internationally at art centers, museums, public venues, in art and street contexts, on curious tongues and inside hungry bellies.

Chris Tonelli is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press, 2009). His first full-length collection, The Trees Around, will be out in April from BIRDS, LLC. He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC where he lives with his wife Allison.


Special thanks to the Topsfield Fair (http://www.topsfieldfair.org/), running from October 2 – 12th, 2009, and Midway ride distribution company Fiesta Shows (http://www.fiestashows.com/), and Rope-a-Dope press (http://rope-a-dope-press.blogspot.com/) for their collaboration.

Funded by the Council for the Arts at MIT.

Rope-A-Dope at the Boog City Festival

Join us on Thursday, September 10th at 7PM for the 7th Season Kickoff of d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press

ACA Galleries
529 W. 20th St., 5th Floor
NYC

Readings from Mary Walker Graham, Justin Marks, Kate Schapira, Kim Gek Lin Short, Sampson Starkweather, and Chris Tonelli

Music from Erik Schoster of He Can Jog

Please note that there's been a time change. The reading is now at 7PM, not 6.

The complete Welcome to Boog City Festival schedule is available for download here.

A review of Ellen Kennedy's SOMETIMES MY HEART PUSHES MY RIBS

Here.

A Couple of Tidbits

Here.

Here.

So and So #33

Poetry from Emily Kendal Frey * Jim Goar * Zachary Schomburg

Designs by Ryan Cook

Saturday * August 15th * 8pm * Morning Times * 8 E. Hargett Street * Raleigh, NC



Emily Kendal Frey lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches at Portland Community College. She is the author of AIRPORT (Blue Hour Press, 2009) and, with Zachary Schomburg, TEAM SAD (Cinematheque, forthcoming).





Jim Goar has spent the past few years in Brevard, Bangkok, Seoul, and Norwich. His poetry has been published by Harvard Review, English, LIT, Jacket, Octopus, Typo, Cimarron Review, and others. His chapbook, Whole Milk, is out from Effing Press. A manuscript, Seoul Bus Poems, will be published by Reality Street Editions in 2010. He edits the journal, past simple.





Zachary Schomburg is the author of The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007) and Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean 2009). He co-edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. He lives in Portland, OR, where he secretly murders people with his bare werewolf hands.





Ryan Cook is a graphic designer and letterpress printer living in Raleigh, NC. He graduated with a Bachelor of Graphic Design from North Carolina State University (BGD '06). Along with working extensively with letterpress in school he also studied letterpress abroad at the London College of Communication and interned at YeeHaw Industries in Knoxville, TN. He recently opened SomethingPressed (www.somethingpressed.com), a letterpress shop in downtown Raleigh. Recent projects include posters for The Bain Project (www.bainproject.com) and The Rock & Shop Market
(www.rockandshopmarket.com).

NO THEATER

Now available.

THIS is ALSO happening.

Allison is 13 1/2 weeks preggers and is feeling great. We're not good at grand announcements, so don't be all mad if we haven't told you. We only told people who directly asked us so as not to lie.

THIS is happening.

And by "this" I mean this.

CAROLINA WREN PRESS & COCKEYED PRESS present an evening with four poets
7pm, Friday, May 29th, 2009
Sound Pure, 808 Washington Street Durham, NC 27701

Shirlette Ammons
Karen Leona Anderson
Andrea Selch
Chris Tonelli

Shirlette Ammons is the author of Stumphole Aunthology of Bakwoods Blood (Big Drum Press, 2002) and Matching Skin, featuring the John Anonymous EP (Carolina Wren Press, 2008). Her work recently appeared in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South and What Your Momma Never Told You: True Stories about Love and Sex. She has received a John Hope Franklin Grant for Documentary Studies, the Ebony-Harlem Award for Literary Talent, as well as Emerging Artist Grants from the Durham Arts Council and the United Arts Council. She was a Cave Canem Fellow in 2008. She is also vocalist and co-bassist for the hip-hop rock band Mosadi Music, whose debut album,
The Window, was released in 2006.

Chris Tonelli co-curates The So and So Series and is the author of No Theater (Brave Men Press, forthcoming), For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming), A Mule-Shaped Cloud (with Sarah Bartlett, horse less press, 2008), and WIDE TREE: Short Poems (Kitchen Press, 2006). He edits the Golden Gloves Chapbook Series for Rope-A-Dope Press and is the On-Line Editor for Blcak Ocean. He teaches at N.C. State in Raleigh.

Andrea Selch has an MFA from the UNC-Greensboro, and a PhD from Duke University. Her poetry has appeared in Calyx, The Greensboro Review, The Asheville Poetry Review, Luna, The MacGuffin, Oyster Boy Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others, as well as on the Best American Poetry Website. She received a 2008 “Hippo” Award from The Monti for her spoken story, "Replacement Child.” Her three collections of poetry are Succory (Carolina Wren Press, 2000), Startling (Turning Point, 2004) and Boy Returning Water to the Sea: Koans for Kelly Fearing (Cockeyed Press, 2009). She has directed the Carolina Wren Press since 2002.

Karen Leona Anderson, author of Punish honey (Carolina Wren Press, 2009), has an MFA from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, an MA from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and a PhD from Cornell University. Her poems have appeared in jubilat, Verse, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, The New Republic, Fence, Sycamore Review, Pleiades, Third Coast, Columbia, Volt, Colorado Review, Sonora Review, and Poetry Ireland Review. She is an assistant professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

So and So #32

Justin Marks * kathryn l. pringle * Chris Vitiello

Saturday * May 16th * 8pm * Morning Times * 8 E. Hargett Street * Raleigh, NC




Justin Marks' first book is A Million in Prizes (New Issues Press). He is also the author of several chapbooks, the most recent being Voir Dire (Rope-a-Dope Press). New work can be found in Harp & Altar, Sink Review and Tusculum Review. He is the founder and editor of Kitchen Press Chapsbooks and lives in New York City with his wife and their twin son and daughter.





kathryn l. pringle is an American poet living in Durham, NC. she wrote a book called Right New Biology.





Chris Vitiello’s Irresponsibility came out last year on Ahsahta Press. He is concerned with, among other things: clarification, light, stars, the sky, clouds, wind, trees, birds, deduction, eyes, leaves, people and their observable behaviors, grasses, the soil, flowers and their growth, description and representation, vegetables, skins and peels, seeds, nuts, cross-sections, dictionary definitions, synonyms and antonyms but especially synonyms, utility, analysis, skepticism, kindness, goodness, quantity, measurement, direct commands, questions, and fact statements. He lives in Durham, NC, is dad to 2 terrific daughters, and works on literacy issues in the public schools.




The event will also feature limited edition collaborative artwork designed by AdAm Peele. Email rqpoetry@gmail.com for more information, or visit thesoandsoseries.blogspot.com.

JUSTIN'S BOOK IS OUT, Y'ALL!!!

A Million in Prizes was selected by Carl Phillips as winner of the 2008 New Issues Poetry Prize, an award for a first book of poetry. Phillips, in his judge's citation, writes, "A Million in Prizes seduces in the best possible way: subtly, with a poignant wit, and a sly charm." Marks is the founder and editor of Kitchen Press Chapbooks in New York City and author of the chapbook Voir Dire (Rope-a-Dope Press). BUY IT BITCHES!!!

Emily Frey's Airport

In case you haven't checked it out yet.
Also check out her and her sister's and Zach's films on vimeo.

Poezieweblog DECONTRABAS

Ton van 't Hof has posted (Theater) again, this time on "the largest and most popular poblog in The Netherlands and Flanders." Thanks, Ton!

Geen Theater

Ton van 't Hof translates (Theater) into Dutch over at 1hundred1.

Some New Releases

Kate Schapira's The Love of Freak Milways & Tango Wax

Christian Peet's Big American Trip

Lytton Smith's All-Purpose Magical Tent

Thanks, Mathias!

A No Theater over at Yes, Starlings! Yes!

The New Sixth Finch is Up

Here.

Yes Theater

E.B. Goodale and Brian Foley are going to be putting out my No Theater poems as a letter-pressed chapbook on their brand spanking new Brave Men Press. Stay tuned.

A couple of tidbits:

1

and

2

VOIR DIRE

Justin Marks is the author of A Million in Prizes (New Issues Press, April 2009). He is the founder and editor of Kitchen Press Chapbooks and lives in New York City with his wife and their infant son and daughter.

Rope-a-Dope Press, 2009. Letterpress printed in an edition of 96, with illustrations by Robert daVies. $8 includes shipping.

I've Never Been A Cartoon Before

A JB Sapienza (Jibberish, JBriggity) creation (his rap, his film). I play bass and make a cameo.

Some No Theaters

The new SIR! is up.

So and So Broadsides Now Avaliable

Click here to get your Robin Vuchnich-designed broadsides of Tony Tost, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Elisa Gabbert (shown here)!

So and So #31 (our first in Raleigh!!!)

Rachel Blau DuPlessis * Elisa Gabbert * Tony Tost

Saturday * February 21st * 8pm * Morning Times * 8 E. Hargett Street * Raleigh, NC



The on-going long poem project of Rachel Blau DuPlessis begun in 1986, is collected in Torques: Drafts 58-76 (Salt Publishing, 2007) as well as in Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan U.P., 2001) and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnnumbered: Précis (Salt Publishing, 2004). Pitch: Drafts 77-95 is forthcoming. In 2006, two books of her innovative essays were published: Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work on gender and poetics, along with reprinting of the ground-breaking The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice, both from University of Alabama Press. In 2002 she was also awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, in 2007, a residency for poetry at Bellagio, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 2008-09, an appointment to the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.. Her website is http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/duplessis





Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent. Her recent poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Diagram, Eleven Eleven, Meridian, Pleiades, Typo and Washington Square. A chapbook, Thanks for Sending the Engine, is available from Kitchen Press. She is also the author, with Kathleen Rooney, of Something Really Wonderful (dancing girl press, 2007) and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths Books, 2008). Their collaborations can be found in Boston Review, Caketrain, jubilat, No Tell Motel and other journals.





Tony Tost is the author of Complex Sleep (Iowa 2007), World Jelly (Effing 2005) and Invisible Bride (LSU 2004). He lives in Durham, NC with Leigh and Simon.



Broadsides of the poets' work, designed by Robin Vuchnich, will be available.

No Thousands "at" AWP

Friday, February 13, 2009 at 6:00pm
The Empty Bottle
1035 N. Western Ave.
Chicago, IL

Black Ocean:
From early silent films to early punk rock, Black Ocean brings together a spectrum of influences and combines them with a radical social perspective on the nature of art and humanity. We manifest our aesthetic in the books we print, the shows we produce, and the work we promote. Based out of Boston, New York and Chicago, our intent is to saturate the public with skillful and passionate forms of expression through a wide variety of mediums. In conjunction with our book releases, we stage parties, concerts, exhibitions and other celebrations around the country. We are committed to promoting artists we firmly believe in, and sharing our enthusiasm for their work with a global audience.

Johannes Göransson was born in Sweden, but has lived around the US for several years. He is the author of: Dear Ra (Starcherone, 2008), Pilot (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008) and A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (Apostrophe Books, 2007)—and the chapbook Majakovskij en tragedy (Dos Press, 2008). He is also the translator of: Collobert Orbital by Johan Jonsson, Gingerbread Monuments by Victor Johansson & Klara Kallstrom, Remainland: Selected Poems by Aase Berg and Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland. He is the co-editor of Action Books and the online journal Action, Yes.

Joshua Harmon is the author of Quinnehtukqut, a novel. His fiction, poems, and essays have appeared in many journals, including Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, New England Review, Southern Review, and Verse. A graduate of Marlboro College and Cornell University, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Dutchess County Arts Council. He likes rainy days, vinyl records, bicycles, pit bulls, tube amplification, and single malt whisky.


Cannibal Books:
Cannibal Books publishes hand-sewn literary journals and chapbooks which focus on divergent and emerging poetics. While our products fit into the category of book arts, the focus is entirely on presenting daring work from a broad range of styles. An aesthetic definition cannot define the hunger. Founded in Brooklyn, NY in 2004, Cannibal Books currently nests in Fayetteville, AR.

Claire Donato is an MFA Literary Arts candidate at Brown University in Providence, RI. Recent poems have been published in Caketrain, Coconut, Harp & Altar, and Cannibal. A first chapbook, Someone Else's Body, is forthcoming from Cannibal Books in 2009. Her hometown is Pittsburgh, PA.

Kevin Holden is from Rhode Island and lives and teaches in Iowa. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Colorado Review, Ecopoetics, The Harvard Advocate, The Liberal, Parcel and Typo.


Forklift, Ohio:
Eric Appleby and Matt Hart founded Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking and Light Industrial Safety in 1995 (that's 14 years without a lost time accident!), and since then have published 19 issues of the journal, several chapbooks, numerous recipes, and all manner of light industrial effects. Operations-wise, the journal now is pretty much exactly the same as it was in the beginning, except now Hart and Appleby have some help: Brett Price is the Assistant Poetry Editor. Merrill Feitell is the Assistant Fiction Editor. And Tricia Suit is the Test Kitchen Supervisor. Issue 20 of Forklift, Ohio will appear at this year's AWP Conference in Chicago, along with chapbooks by Russell Dillon and Alexis Orgera, and a book-book called 31 Poems by Dean Young. Learn more about Forklift, Ohio at: www.forkliftohio.com.

Russell Dillon was born in New York during the mid 70s and hasn't been able to get over it. However, in an effort to put the past behind him, he's attended a number of schools in various places, learned things at each one of them, and received degrees from Emerson College and the Bennington Writing Seminars. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alligator Juniper, Big Bell, Forklift, Ohio, and Tight, among others. He currently lives in San Francisco, where he does almost everything life asks of him.

Alexis Orgera is freelance writer/editor based in Florida and the Assistant Director of the Writing Resource Center at the New College of Florida. Her work has appeared in Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Folio, Forklift, Ohio, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, storySouth, and The Rialto, among others. Her website is www.alexisorgera.com.

Dean Young has published ten books of poetry, recently Elegy on Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Primitive Mentor. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, two from the National endowment for the Arts as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College and was on the permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop until becoming the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. A book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness will be published in 2010.


Octopus Books:
Octopus Magazine was founded in 2003 & through its 11 issues has showcased the best of emerging poets. Additionally the magazine has published the work of such established writers as Paul Muldoon, Barbara Guest & CD Wright. Octopus Books is a small press founded in
2006, which has published hand-made, limited edition chapbooks & full-length books. Their first two full length book releases are Eric Baus' Tuned Droves and Julie Doxsee's Undersleep.

Eric Baus is the author of The To Sound (Verse Press/Wave Books), Tuned Droves (Octopus Books) and several chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Hambone, Web Conjunctions, The Poets On Painters
Anthology, and elsewhere. He edits Minus House chapbooks and lives in Denver.

Shane McCrae went to school at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and Harvard Law. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The American Poetry Review, American Letters & Commentary, African
American Review, Colorado Review, New Orleans Review and others. His chapbook, One Neither One, is forthcoming from Octopus Books. He lives in Iowa City.


Rope-A-Dope Press:
Founded in the spring of 2007 by painter Robert daVies and poet Mary Walker Graham, Rope-a-Dope Press fosters collaborations between artists, writers, and their communities through the publication of handmade, letterpress printed chapbooks, broadsides, and artists' books.

Sampson Starkweather is the author of City of Moths from Rope-A-Dope Press and The Photograph from horse less press. He lives in the woods alone.

Chris Tonelli is the author of three chapbooks: For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming), A Mule-Shaped Cloud (w/ Sarah Bartlett, horse less press, 2008), and WIDE TREE: Short Poems (Kitchen Press, 2006). He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.

JuCo's new shizz!

Julia Cohen's new chapbook, The History of a Lake Never Drowns, is now available from Dancing Girl Press for the affordable price of $7.00: http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/history.html.