THE MILLS COLLEGE BOOK ARTS PROGRAM IS IN DANGER

Hello Friends of Books and Art and everything in between: 

Mills College has decided to axe its fantastic Book Arts program, which includes a dual MFA in Creative Writing and Book Arts. In terms of programs like this, it is a model for others--I look to it as what the program at Colorado College could be. And in a larger sense the cutting of the program follows a larger, distressing pattern in higher ed. where small, interesting, rare programs are cut in favor of bland, corporate sameness. If you care about books and art and book arts and education, please take a moment to sign and share this petition.

And here is a website with more info and testimonies from current and former students of the program: http://savemillsbookart.tumblr.com/

LABOR DAY HOLIDAY (NO SYSTEM IS CLOSED)

There has been a lot of growth in our (still) little print-book-publishing community here in COS in the past year: new independent artists, new publishers, new community studios, new recording studios, new zines, new letterpress studios. It’s been wonderful, amazing, and I can’t wait to see how far we can take this.

The first part of a lively scene is the people doing the work. We’re getting us some people, making us some work. The second part is a place where those people can gather, to share their work with other people also gathered. To bring those “other people” (the public, let’s say) in, to let the artists already there out, to make those “other people” not “other,” but people, each belonging in their individual way.

A secret group with a static membership does not grow as a community, plays no role as a group in the larger community. A place of sharing & gathering & growing/changing is crucial. One such place is on the verge of opening in south downtown Colorado Springs: Mountain Fold Books. (Full disclosure: I am a board member of Mountain Fold, and I believe fiercely in the project.) The description from the MFB website:

Mountain Fold Books is a new kind of bookstore. We're a non-profit, membership-based bookstore and reading room/gallery that will make small-press books and magazines accessible to the community of Colorado Springs and the greater Pikes Peak Region. While we have an amazing library district and two university libraries, small-press books of poetry and art books remain difficult to access. Our aim is to help connect Colorado Springs to the growing art and literary communities along the Front Range of Colorado by providing a welcoming place for the community to gather, read, exchange ideas, give readings and see books and art that currently can only be found in larger metropolitan areas. 

We are entering the last week of Mountain Fold’s first Membership Drive & Fundraiser. Success in this endeavor means that MFB will be funded until July of 2015, which means that the folks in charge can focus on making it the crucial thing that it needs to be, that this community needs, and that the small press-artists’ book-zine-print-etc. community at large needs. All of the information that you need to make your (tax deductible) donation is here:

http://www.mountainfoldbooks.org/shop/

A JAB AT THE HEADS

The newest issue of JAB (The Journal of Artists’ Books), #35, has a short, thoughtful paragraph (& a color photo!) about The Heads of My Family, My Friends, My Colleagues, by Justin Sirois, in the “Books Received” section. The mini-review was written by Columbia College Chicago MFA student & Print Production Fellow Levi Sherman. This issue of JAB is pretty phenomenal—it is mostly artists’ books, six of them, to be exact.

Here is the full text on The Heads:

Justin Sirois has a knack for writing with, about, and for digital technology, so it is a pleasant surprise to see NewLights Press adapt his new book of poems The Heads of My Family, My Friends, My Colleagues to a letterpress printed codex that is perfectly suited to the content and style of the writing. On each page, black type is framed by dizzying, RGB-colored pixelesque patterns constructed out of en quads. Eight-bit tiles are knocked out of these borders, and like the poems themselves refer to online communication in their style, though the text itself also holds explicitly to the conventions of writing on the web and on cell phones. The book is as surprising as the poetry it contains, including blind embossed verses set on the interior spine fold—a thoughtful use of the double pamphlet structure. The book evokes a reading experience similar to browsing online—a schizophrenic, rhizomatic tour of sex, politics, pop culture, and everything in between, The writing, first-person and conversational, is engaging and holds the book together despite the breadth and obscurity of topics. This is a book that knows its audience and speaks powerfully both to and about them. (LS)

Thanks Levi! Thanks JAB!

VISTA SANS WOOD TYPE PROJECT: UPDATE

 
The folks at the Vista Sans Wood Type Project (see post below for more on this) have started a new, improved Kickstarter campaign to fund their book project. Now when you donate you can choose exactly which print you want. Which is awesome, because these things are fucking sweet. No really, I just saw them all at Codex. Get on this.

AGAINST PRESERVATION: THE VISTA SANS WOOD TYPE PROJECT

Hatch Show Print’s motto is: “Preservation Through Use.” When they say this they are talking specifically about their collection of historic type & image blocks. They “preserve” those physical things by continuing to use them and keeping the iconic images that they produced circulating in the culture. The idea of “preservation through use” is an oxymoron—using those blocks is not going to preserve them. That use is going to destroy them.

Generally speaking, when it comes to Book Arts & letterpress printing, I am against preservation. Not that I want to see all of our lovely tools, equipment & materials burned & scrapped. Quite the opposite, actually. I am against preservation in the sense that something that needs to be “preserved” is something that has died, that is in the process of rapid decay. The preservation impulse in Book Arts, while noble & in some ways worthwhile, is holding it back.

Letterpress printing, hand bookbinding, small/private press publishing, etc., etc. are commercially obsolete. That does not mean they are “dead”—historically over, sealed shut, capable of no further development in aesthetics and/or technology. The Economy is not the only economy. These things—these techniques, tools, equipment, processes, materials, ways of doing-learning-moving—are living things. & there is, terrifyingly, excitingly, more work to be done.

The Vista Sans Wood Type Project gets at several very important things:

1) It literally advances the technology of type production & letterpress printing. There is now a typeface that was never available as type, in lead or wood, in the world in physical form. And the type is different from traditional wood type—some of it has a very visible grain. It is not so precious anymore—it can be kerned, mortised, cut, spliced without worry. It points toward even more possibilities.

2) The project is not just about the type, it’s also about its utility & function. The functional/shareable is the new relational.

3) The project is not just about the type, it’s also about how it’s used to advance the aesthetic range of letterpress printing. You can see lots of the prints in the video above. Very few of them look like a “traditional” letterpress broadside. & that points to one very, very important thing about letterpress printing—it’s an extremely flexible & adaptable medium. The pinnacle of its aesthetic achievement was not/is not black, serifed text type on white or off-white paper.

4) The project is not just about the type, it’s about community, about this community of incredible people making incredible things.

Things like the Vista Sans Wood Type Project are absolutely crucial to keeping the fields of book arts, printing, typography, design, publishing, etc., etc. moving & interesting & fun. Tricia & Ashley have already made the type, but now they need some funds to make a book documenting the project—a book that will take the project even further. Please consider helping them out by following the link at the end of the video or by clicking here.

WE HAD A READING HERE IN THE SPRINGS ON FRIDAY NIGHT & IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME & IT FEELS SO GOOD TO BE HOME

It was the first reading in a new series called “Say Hello to Your Last Poem.” The readers were Matt Potter, a promising & motivated Colorado College student, and Corina Copp, a fantastic poet from Brooklyn & author of Pro Magenta/Be Met (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011). The series is being organized by Noel Black (author of Uselysses, also Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011) and myself, and it was held at the home of Noel and his wife, artist/curator Marina Eckler. They have this incredible house with a backyard that extends up to a red rock outcropping, like a mini national park, and that’s where we did the actual reading, with crazy colored lights and the vastness of the sky & mountains behind the readers. It started with a potluck dinner and just the right amount of people came out. Everything synced.

So why am I making such a big deal out of a little house reading? It’s not a novel format, even here in the Springs, which has a thriving house-show-music scene. And one would expect a good reading from two good poets. Hey, no big deal.

& “no big deal” is absolutely correct, which is why it was awesome, and which is why I am excited about it & the future of doing this. Because these things don’t have to be a big deal, and they’re often better if they’re not. All one needs is an interested & loving & awesome local community. & we’ve got that here in Colorado Springs, believe it or not.

The people, the place, the work, the event itself. It’s all there, shimmering, and on top of all that I realized what’s been missing from the work of the NewLights Press for far, far too long—being anchored in a community, one that is both local & reaching out & welcoming in. (It’s been since the early days in Baltimore, when we were organizing readings, making chapbooks, and having a great & terrible time all of the time.) I’ve often said, on this blog and elsewhere, that one of the most important & vital parts of small press publishing is the community, the community already established, and the community that the making & sharing of work is constantly building. But in all of my transience over the last 8 years (!) I had forgotten that literally bringing people together is one of the best parts, one of the most important parts.

I had somehow forgotten about the interplay between the work produced (the writing, the books) and the local-right-there-and-giving-you-hugs audience, about how important those flesh & blood & laughing people are, and about how work made in that environment can become an anchor point for a shared, lived experience.

More readings? Yes.
More books? Yes.
We hope to see you all here soon.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT THE PRESS AT COLORADO COLLEGE

This is a short documentary about The Press at Colorado College, the institution and studio to which the NewLights Press is symbiotically attached. The film was made by a student apprentice at The Press, Demetria Humphries. It's a really great little film, and I was honored to be a part of it. It's got lots of great letterpress action!

LUCKY ME

that I ended up on the analog mailing list of Pointed Press. Here are some images of their latest postcard:

CHAPBOOK LECTURE & POETRY READING IN DENVER ON SAT. 4/21

Anyone on the front range interested in small press biz/poetry/art should go to this event at Counterpath in Denver:

Saturday, April 21, 2012, at 7 p.m. at Counterpath (Denver), join us for “Buy, Sell, Trade: The Chapbook Press in the 21st Century, and the Story of Ugly Duckling Presse,” with a talk and presentation by Ugly Duckling Presse founder Matvei Yankelevich and a reading by Ugly Duckling Presse author Noel Black.

Full info here.

A FEW THINGS THAT I WOULD LIKE YOU TO KNOW ABOUT, ABOUT INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING AND BOOK ARTS AND WAR AND WHAT YOU WILL

Texts/essays about independent publishing have been on my mind a great deal lately, probably because I will soon be participating in a class about independent publishing, probably because that’s what I do. The librarian in me wants to archive these things, but this is the best I can do for now. Two texts, one a post by Roxanne Gay on HTMLGiant, the other from Derek White of Calamari Press (brought to my attention via HTMLGiant). These are a bit old now. They are still good, of course, and worth sharing (and archiving):

Roxanne Gay on Tiny Hardcore Press
Derek White on Calamari Press

The fifth anniversary of the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad just passed, and there has been a lot of activity among the members of the Al-Mutanabbi project, which was recently expanded to include artists’ books. You can read about and see some of the books here. Here is an article in The Huffington Post about the project as a whole. In the article Beau Beausoleil, the driving force and organizer, talks about why he felt it was important to do the project, and why he thinks it is still important. Sometimes it is crucial not to look away.

In other news about the intersection of book arts and war, the Combat Paper Project is trying to raise some money through Kickstarter. The drive is almost over, and they have already reached their goal, but every little bit helps. Here’s the link to the site and the video:




And finally, finally, speaking of war, speaking of the end, speaking of peace, there are only THREE COPIES of Kyle Schlesinger’s What You Will left for sale. And then that’s it & that’s it.

WAKING, CATCHING UP, WAKING

My apologies for the lack of posts lately. The NewLights Press has been very busy, to the point where these silent mornings of writing had to be used for catching up on sleep or for going in to work early. But now a new book is done, the book labeled As-Of-Now Untitled in the last few “Production is Reception” posts, the book made to be an insert in JAB 31. It has a title now: Clerestory. The images above and below are from the binding. 600 copies, our largest edition yet. They should be going out with the new issue by April 1st.

Maybe it’s Daylight Savings Time, or maybe it’s the winter slowly receding, but I feel like this somehow marks a turning point for NewLights. A subtle one, for sure. A turning point that will almost certainly only be perceptible to me. We shall see. Somewhere in here is a new beginning. Maybe because that last book was essentially about new beginnings, the new beginnings given to us all each day. We all have our own ways of marking time.

The tests that I conducted for the printing of Clerestory were also secret tests for the next book, The Heads by Justin Sirois. The tests determined that my idea for the book was not going to work (see above). So it’s back to the beginning on that. Always these new beginnings, but what a great place to be.

And it seems appropriate to leave this morning’s meditation with the message that has been sitting on my desk for a few weeks now, that will soon be added to the wall in front of my desk so that I can see it everyday. It’s from the ILSSA, and it speaks for itself:

[A quick note about the image above: the scan doesn't really do the actual object justice, as that orange you are seeing is actually fluorescent ink on the real thing. These screens have their limits.]

MORE THINGS TO SHARE: DENVER ZINE LIBRARY

The Denver Zine Library is running a fundraising campaign. It’s a library for zines. This is a small, important, importantly small thing. Below are two videos. The first is their intro video, and the second is their 2 week update, just posted to the fundraising page today. And here are some links—one to the fundraising page where you can make a donation, and the other to the Denver Zine Library main site.

MIMEO MIMEO #6 IS OUT & AVAILABLE, and AN INTERVIEW

Issue number 6 of the great magazine Mimeo Mimeo is out and available for purchase. Here's the official description from the Mimeo Mimeo blog:

Mimeo Mimeo #6: The Poetry Issue will soon be on newsstands everywhere featuring new work by eight poets who have consistently composed quality writing since the golden era of the mimeo revolution. Contributors include Bill Berkson, John Godfrey, Ted Greenwald, Joanne Kyger, Kit Robinson, Rosmarie Waldrop, Lewis Warsh, and Geoffrey Young.

Beat the crowds and have a copy delivered to your door hassle free. Each copy packed and personally addressed with care by the editors of Mimeo Mimeo. Just click on the "Buy" button on the right and select your location. It's as easy as that.

Buy it here.

& I am very honored to be included in Rob McClennan's series of interviews with small press publishers. He asks some good questions. You can read that here. Thanks Rob!

POEMS & PICTURES AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO

Poems & Pictures: A Renaissance in the Art of the Book (1946-1981)

Opening Reception
Thursday, February 9: 5 - 8 PM


Poems & Pictures features books, paintings, collages, periodicals, and ephemera that explore fundamental relationships between form and content; seeing and reading; writing and drawing; and the extraordinary occasions when these things and activities fuse, introducing a third element.    

Poets, artists, and collaborators in this exhibition include Wallace Berman, Joe Brainard, Robert Creeley, Jim Dine, Philip Guston, Joanne Kyger, Emily McVarish, Karen Randall, Larry Rivers, George Schneeman, and many more [including NewLights!]. Together they share in the common objective of bringing bold new writing into print where commercial presses fear to tread, and to do so with imagination and intelligence. 



Poems & Pictures originated at The Center for Books Arts in New York and is curated by Kyle Schlesinger.

More details here.

LOCAL-IZING (2)

Speaking of community, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to get this blog to include contributions from other people. I’ve always hoped that it could be a resource for others engaged in similar activities, but perhaps it can also be a channel of communication for that community as well. My first thought on how to do this was to do simple profiles of other small presses and makers of artists’ books. But then it came to my attention that someone else is already doing that, has been doing it for awhile, and is probably doing a better job than I would. I haven’t given up on that idea completely, but I need to figure out how to steer it in a different direction.

And then, of course, there could also be interviews. And there will be interviews—in fact, this post is the first one (Really! Keep reading!). I thought it might be interesting to do the interviews with groups of people, asking one question about a particular topic. As usual, I’m doing everything on the fly, in the morning before I go to work, so I haven’t quite refined the system to have received multiple answers that I would post all at once. I’m excited about this first one, so it’s going up now. Here it is: a question about community, directed to Adam Robinson, the proprietor of the great Publishing Genius Press in Baltimore, MD.

NewLights: Publishing Genius is based in Baltimore, MD, and frequently publishes work by Baltimore writers. Does Publishing Genius make it a point to publish work by local writers and artists? And why? And are there other activities around publishing that you see as important for fostering local community?

Adam Robinson: Initially, I didn't have any intention of publishing writers local to my community. In fact, I didn't realize until last year that a significant portion of PGP books were from Baltimoreans (7 out of 18, basically). Then, when I did realize it, it came as no surprise. It made sense, not because Baltimore has a particularly rich literary community (which, as you know, it does), but because I seek out like-minded people, and I become friends with them, and I pay close attention to what my friends do. I do feel like it's one of my goals to promote my community's culture, and interestingly that is another way of expressing myself, personally. By publishing Megan McShea's book (forthcoming), I'm saying, "This is who I am, or what I want to be like." However, does this foster local community? I mean, it bolsters Baltimore's writers outside of the community, but I'm not doing a great deal to get the books into the hands of this city's residents. But one aspect that I think does foster the community, something that you pointed to in your blog post, is bringing in outsiders for the event, and showing them around town. Taking them to the amazing local literary hotspots like Atomic Books and Normals. Introduce them to people by hosting readings and encouraging the exchange of ideas. And not just that, but publishing and reading translations, I think, has been on my mind a lot lately. Because it's an important question: what is a community. There are worlds within worlds. Before I'm a Baltimorean, I think, I'm an artist. That links me with other artists, regardless of location. So I want to know what my fellow art citizens are doing in Spain and Iraq and Singapore. This last bit is perhaps more ethereal than the practicalities influencing your question, it's basically where PGP has been since starting out -- that the literature community takes priority over the municipality -- and yet 40% of the books are by writers who live within 10 miles of me.

Hopefully there will be more of these soon, hopefully they can be presented together. (Of course they can.) If this is a question that you’d be interested in answering, please let me know at newlightspress-AT-gmail-DOT-com.

DON’T DETERMINE ON ME

The following excerpt is from the article “The State of the Book: A Conversation,” by Johanna Drucker and Buzz Spector, which is in the printed Printeresting edition of The California Printmaker (the journal of The California Society of Printmakers), p. 20. [Ed. Note: Totally worth buying and reading and owning.] This particular part is Johanna Drucker:

But as we shift towards the multi-platform possibilities that the current media environment offers, what changes will it make to our work? I find it very useful to use all media for their distinct capacities—aesthetic, production, distribution, affordability, etc.—but know […] that media only offer opportunity, they don’t determine anything. As I’ve said many times, the technical ability to produce avant-garde typography (i.e. Futurist and Dada compositions) was present in Gutenberg’s shop. The cultural disposition towards such innovation did not exist. Such work could not be conceived. Sure, shaped poetry has a long history, into antiquity, and all written language makes use of graphic affordances, but mixed font, diagonal, radically cut-up typographic work has as much to do with the bombardment of the senses in urban spaces by polyglot and multi-modal communications in verbal forms (radio, posters, newspapers, journals, advertising, film) as with technical innovation. [emphasis added]

I think that the point that Drucker is trying to make here is an important one: that any media in and of itself has no “natural” state, no “natural” progression that the work in that media inevitably follows. “Media only offer opportunity” to human and institutional agents. This is also the whole point of The Nature of the Book, by Adrian Johns, which talks about how everything we take for granted about books & print was not always so, and were constructed over time, differently in different places, through an extraordinarily complex set of conversations, arguments, laws, and practices. To cite a modern example, the Internet is not inherently and naturally “democratic,” and could/can/is be used for insidious and/or overt social control—all in the name of justice, of course.

What does this mean for us, now, in the opening stages of a possible shift from print to electronic text? It means that we shouldn’t let corporate/media/money interests tell us what the future is—it means that we must share in the active shaping of it. Which is why this is such an exciting time to be doing all of this writing, publishing, making, designing, shaping, becoming, occupying, sharing, talking…

MY GIRLFRIEND'S ARTWORK IS AWESOME

And now you can buy it on Etsy. Which you should. And look at more at http://www.coriecole.com Small press people: buying this work does (indirectly) support small press publishing. Everything, as always, is connected, and these things are human things.

A FEW THINGS, ALL CONNECTED, AMEN

Been away for a few days while not really being away—some busy mornings with no time to write. So we’ll ease back in with a few announcements of things:

The venerable poet, printer, and thinker-of-all-things-book, Alan Loney, has recently started a new blog for his imprint, Electio Editions. There are some good posts with lovely images (like the one above) of lovely things up there already.

A new press has started in our former home of The Bay Area: Zumbar Press, which is focused on producing letterpress chapbooks and broadsides, as well as documenting that process of construction (something we here at NewLights can certainly support). Only 9 copies of the first broadside remain.

And this new press in the Bay reminds me of Lyn Hejinian’s Tuumba press, which undertook a similar project, beginning in the 70s and continuing and discontinuing until now & into the future. There is a great interview with Lyn in the new issue of Mimeo Mimeo, which just came out. Get your copy here. Then subscribe.

And also in that issue is an essay about poetry and typography by the aforementioned Alan Loney.

Mimeo Mimeo gets thicker and better with each issue. Which is good for all of us, good for the world. 

COMPLINE

Poet & printer Michael Cross, who used to publish wonderful books under the imprint Atticus/Finch, has started to publish wonderful books under a new imprint: Compline. The first book from that new press is C.J. Martin’s Two Books.

Two Books is one the best looking books I’ve seen from a small press in a while. It’s very elegantly designed, small in size but with a heft to it (it’s a little bit more than 200 pages). The image at the top of the post shows the (digitally printed?) cover while this one below shows the simple and beautiful letterpress printed jacket. Find out more about the book, the author, and the press, and buy the book, here.

LUMINOUS THINGS ARE ALL AROUND

I linked to this in a post last week, but it’s so fantastic that I’d thought I should mention it specifically: The William Blake Archive. It’s a comprehensive digital archive where you can view and read multiple copies of Blake’s illuminated/printed books. Things like this are one reason why the Internet and other digital technology is good for books, and good for those of us who are interested in them.

Along with the works themselves there are also some informative essays about Blake’s life and about the process that he used to make the books. Here’s a brief passage (related to some other threads that have been running through this blog) from the essay about his process, “Illuminated Printing,” by Joseph Viscomi:

Blake realized very early that his new medium's autographic nature made the poem the only prerequisite for executing plates, that rewriting texts was also an act of visual invention, and thus that the medium could be used for production rather than reproduction. With no designs to transfer or reproduce, the placement and extent of text, letter size, line spacing, as well as placement and extent of illustration, were invented only during execution. This method of designing meant that Blake did not know what lines or stanza would go on what plate, or how many plates a poem/book would need. Working without models allowed each illuminated print and book to evolve through its production in ways impossible in conventional book-making. Blake could begin working on a book before it was completely written.

And of course you can also download Blake’s texts from Project Gutenberg.

Several worlds to get lost in.