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BookThug BookLaunch October 22nd!
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Praise for Bookthug
"I love Bookthug, not only because their catalog absolutely rocks, but because they've introduced me to amazing poets like Meredith Quartermain. When her most recent collection of poems, Matter, came into my possession, I became obsessed with her poetic voice; reading her poetry aloud on the subway, looking up the schemas she used, reading and re-reading in different configurations to explore her intricate perceptual fragments of being." --Karren Correia De Silva, Steel Bananas
Kate Eichhorn Shortlisted for 2009 Lampert Award
The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award is given in the memory of Gerald Lampert, an arts administrator who organized authors' tours and took a particular interest in the work of new writers. The award recognizes the best first book of poetry published by a Canadian in the preceding year.
This year’s shortlisted poets and books are:
Evening Land by Adam Chiles (Cinnamon Press)
Crabwise to the Hounds by Jeramy Dodds (Coach House Books)
Fond by Kate Eichhorn (BookThug)
What if red ran out by Katia Grubisic (Goose Lane Editions)
The Invisibility Exhibit by Sachiko Murakami (Talonbooks)
Late Night With Wild Cowboys by Johanna Skibsrud (Gaspereau Press)
Congratulations to the authors for their fine work and many thanks to the jurors for their hard work on this year’s awards. The winner of this award will be announced at the annual LCP Poetry Fest and Conference in Vancouver, BC on June 13th, 2009.
The Danforth Review reviews White Porcupine by Phil Hall
"Reading Phil Hall's poetry is much like being lost in a forest and finding the occasional open space where the variety of trees and the location can be clearly seen. His elusive style has strong appeal but the sense of dis-orientation is almost continual." (continue...)
BOOKTHUG LAUNCHES DEPARTMENT OF NARRATIVE STUDIES
Swim by Marianne Apostolides is now available, and with it comes BookThug's new Department of Narrative Studies. Get Swim here. Listen to Marianne discussing Swim with Jennifer LoveGrove on CKLN here. Come and see Marianne swimming in person at Supermarket with Melissa Buzzeo (Face) on 10 February.
FINAL BOOKTHUG TITLE FROM 2008 NOW AVAILABLE:
At last, Body of Text by David Ellingsen and Michael V. Smith is available!
BOOKTHUG 2009 SUBSCRIPTIONS NOW ON SALE:
The New and Improved BookThug Subscription Package will keep you totally full of Thugs all year round. One fee, all the books, all year. Everything. That's the deal. In these times of economic downturn and strife, we need sound investments. Invest in BookThug: the future will thank you for it. For full details
BOOKTHUG ANNOUNCES DEPARTMENT OF NARRATIVE STUDIES
BookThug has already initiated stimulating series such as our Departments of Reissue and Critical Thought. BookThus is now pleased to make its bid against the fiction market with our new Department of Narrative Studies. Our first title is a unique blend of formal constraint, theoretical intellectualism and fludity of narrative that will remind you experiments in literature are actually literary. Get ready for: Swim by Marianne Apostolides
New Books
BookThug is pleased to announce the following books are now
physically available:
Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
Every Way Oakly by Steve McCaffery
At Alberta by Nathalie Stephens
Welcome to Earth by Amanda Earl
Quixote Variations by Ramon Fernandez (Alfred Noyes, trans)
This & That Lenin by Steven Zultanski
BookThug Fall Launch Party! November 18th 7:30pm at the Supermarket.BOOKTHUG LAUNCH
Featuring Paul Hegedus (In Stereo), Philip Quinn (The SubWay), Victor Coleman (MAL ARME), Mark Goldstein (After Rilke), Amanda Earl (Welcome to Earth), and Steven Zultanski (This&That Lenin).
Buy your subscription, have a drink, celebrate a new list of Thugs.
Can’t make it? No worries, the event will be broadcast live on the web.
Toronto Launch of Tender Buttons and Every Way Oakley: The Department of Reissue, reissues Stein and McCaffery. Join us for a reading by Steve McCaffery.
Thursday, November 27, 2008 7:30 - 10-30
This Ain't the Rosedale Library
86 Nassau Street (in Kensington Market)
Join BookThug as we release the first ever Canadian edition of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons (with introduction by Steve McCaffery) and of Every Way Oakley by Steve McCaffery. McCaffery will read from both texts.
TENDER BUTTONS
A seminal text in the history of poetry and poetics, Tender Buttons was
originally published in 1914 and is considered one of the great Modern
experiments in verse. At one time or another it has been thought of as a
masterpiece of Cubism, a modernist triumph, a spectacular failure, a
collection of confusing gibberish, and an intentional hoax. Despite the
fact that it was written by an ex-pat American, the text of Tender
Buttons has had massive influence on Canadian poetry and poetics for
nearly three quarters of a century. Therefore, BookThug is pleased to
produce the first Canadian Edition of this important text in a
publication that pays homage to the original 1914 edition.
EVERY WAY OAKLEY
Originally published in an edition of 100 copies for a class at the
University of Alberta in 1976, Every Way Oakly is Steve McCafferys
homolinguistic translation of Gertrude Steins Tender Buttons. The
original edition, which appeared as a classy photocopied edition printed
on letter-sized sheets and stapled along spine, has been unavailable
since its publication. Over the years bits and pieces have appeared in
anthologies and selected works, but the collection has never been
reissued in its entirety. Until now. Playful and engaging, these poems
stem from detailed discussions with Dick Higgins on allusive referential
and other unorthodox translational methods and McCafferys work with the
Toronto Research Groups work on translation practice and theory.
Gertrude Stein was born in 1874 and died in 1946. An American writer who
spent most of her life in France, she was a catalyst in the development
of modern literature and art. Stein was the author of more than 25 books
of experimental writing, many of which were self-published. Tender
Buttons was her second published work, and set the foundation for not
only her own oeuvre, but for generations of writers to come. She never
visited Canada.
Steve McCaffery is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and
criticism, most recently Crime Scenes. Two titles appeared in 2007:
Paradigm of the Tinctures (with illustrations by Alan Halsey) and The
Basho Variations. Slightly Left of Thinking: Poems and Postcognitions
appeared in 2008. His monumental two volume selected Seven Pages Missing
was published in 2002. After many years living in Toronto, he now lives
in Buffalo where he is the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters
and Director of the UB Poetics Program at the State University of New
York at Buffalo.
Poetry Reading:
December 17th,
Astonishing displays of lexical perversions from BookThugs Victor Coleman (ICON TACT, Mi Sing, Mal Arme) and
Michael Boughn (22 Skidoo/Subtractions, forthcoming), reading along with Canadian double bass player
Aaron Lumley.
Wednesday, December 17th
This Ain't the Rosedale Library
86 Nassau Street (in Kensington Market)
Toronto. 7:00 PM.
Free
READING: December 4 Nathalie Stephens (At Alberta, 2008; Je Nathanaël, 2006) will read and talk at the
Toronto Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON. Time to be determined.
Toronto Launch of Tender Buttons and Every Way Oakley: The Department of Reissue, reissues Stein and McCaffery. Join us for a reading by Steve McCaffery.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
7:30 - 10-30
This Ain't the Rosedale Library
86 Nassau Street (in Kensington Market)
Join BookThug as we release the first ever Canadian edition of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons (with introduction by Steve McCaffery) and of Every Way Oakley by Steve McCaffery. McCaffery will read from both texts.
SEMINAR: October 1st 7:30 pm.
Meredith Quartermain presents Matter at Margaret Christakos' Influency Salon. U of T School of Continuing Studies, 158 St. George Street
READING: October 7th @ 8 pm.
Meredith Quartermain (Matter, 2008) will read at the Art Bar Poetry Series Clinton's 693 Bloor St Toronto.
BOOKTHUGS READ: October 2 BookThugs Jake Kennedy and Gustave Morin participate in the launch of BOREDOM FIGHTERS, and new anthology of graphic literature co-edited by Kennedy and published by Tightrope.
READING: Oct. 10th Steven Zultanski (This&That Lenin, 2008) reads at The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church 131 E. 10th St. New York, NY 10003 with Vanessa Place. Event starts at 10pm. Admission: $8 Regular $7 Students and Seniors $5 Members
LAUNCH: October 19th Victor Coleman launches Mal Arme (Letter Drop III) at David Mirvish Books 596 Markham Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6G 2L8 from 3-5PM. Free. Refreshments.
READING: October 31st Karen Fastrup appears at the International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront in Toronto to read from Beloved of My Twenty-seven Senses. Friday, October 31, 8:00pm Studio Theatre. Also appearing: Canadian writer and playwright C.C. Humphreys, American Rachel Kushner and German/Canadian Dan Vyleta. Poetry from Kathleen McCracken. Anne Hines hosts. $15 gen. admin.
READING: November 2: Karen Fastrup reads from Beloved of My Twenty-seven Senses in Parry Sound as part of the IFOA's outreach program. 4:00pm at Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts: Karen Fastrup, Maggie Helwig, Andrew Pyper, and Paul Quarrington travel to Parry Sound to read from their latest books. Charlotte Stein hosts.
BOOKTHUG LAUNCH
BookThug Fall Launch Party! November 18th 7:30pm at the
Supermarket.
Featuring
Paul Hegedus (In Stereo),Philip
Quinn (The SubWay),
Victor Coleman (MAL ARME),
Mark Goldstein (After Rilke),
Amanda Earl (Welcome to Earth), and
Steven Zultanski (This&That Lenin).
Buy your subscription, have a drink, celebrate a new list of Thugs.
Can’t make it? No worries, the event will be broadcast
live on the web.
Facebook
SPRING READING
Trade in those muddied gardening gloves for some sanitary white
archival ones. Two new books of poetry are sure to get you digging
in the card catalogue.
Kate Eichhorn’s first book, Fond, is a book-length
disentanglement of one archive of emotion dwelling in the eerily
familiar while exposing the inevitable limits of the archive. Fond
was named one of Toronto’s spring books to watch by the Danforth
Review.
Meredith Quartermain’s formally innovative Matter unearths the
relations between humans, language and the planet by digging through
a phylogenetic tree within Roget’s taxonomy.
BUY: $20 EACH
Though we always suspected as much, it turns out someone else thinks BookThug is doubly awesome. Two BookThug titles tied for first at this year’s bpNichol Chapbook Awards. Quantum Chaos & Poems: A Manifest(o)ation by Cara Benson is “a glissading text around the order/disorder binary...." says Christopher Rizzo. "In a good way." And Jay MillAr’s Lack Lyrics presents a conflictual aesthetic born out of being downsized from a dead-end job and taking up the task of “working it out” with words by emailing himself pithy notes that were eventually compiled into Lack Lyrics. We’re glad you like us!BPNICHOL CHAPBOOK AWARD LOVES THUGS
Buy: $10 each
BookThug’s sister entity Apollinaire’s Bookshoppe is now the exclusive Canadian distributor of US-based Chax Press books. Chax Press books celebrate the changing shape of American poetry by presenting experimental works with humanist commitment. Apollinaire’s Bookshoppe and BookThug celebrated this new union by hosting Karen Mac Cormak and Steve McCaffery at The Cameron House in Toronto. Karen Mac Cormack launched her much-anticipated Implexures (complete edition) and Steve McCaffery read from his quirky new collection, Slightly Left of Thinking.CHAX PRESS BOOKS COMES NORTH
COMING SOON: A NOVELIST NEAR YOU
BookThug is deepening the aesthetic waters with a savvy new line of innovative fiction titles, thus furthering our bid for experimental lit domination! Our first title is Karen Fastrup’s Beloved of My 27 Senses, translated from the Danish by Tara Chase. Lilian Munk Røsing says Beloved is “a maze of masculine and feminine, of blood ties, traces of previous sexual encounters, repulsions, and attractions – the throbbing, interlacing sensory landscape of family ties and of love.” The book will be out in July, but Fastrup will launch the book in Toronto this fall as part of Harbourfront’s International Festival of Authors October 22 to November 1 2008.
RE))VIEWED
Phil
Hall's tombe of work has been placed under the microscope at Poetics.ca
where rob mclennan explores Phil Hall’s Surrural: Ontario gothic, the killdeer,
the music of failure and the distraction of shifting ground.
Also…
Kemeny Babineau reviews Phil Hall’s White Porcupine: “White Porcupine pushes
language to the edges of being, or the edges of being into language. Frilled
with word quills the poet pricks the self and pierces the flesh of an other.
This is a verbal assault on the past, and on language, a writing of a wronging.”
Read the full article.