trenchant } trenchart

trenchart: maneuvers, is the fifth annual trenchart series, "with aesthetics written by participating series writers and visual artists. maneuvers explores the possibilities of re-ordered time and content framed with the understanding that one cannot separate content from time, and that to shift the form or the order is to shift the subjectivies of a text." flim poets harold abramowitz and matthew timmons, along with paul hoover, lily hoang, and vincent dachy are this year's participants in the series.

trenchart : material caught my eye way back--a damn fine set of books----

and remember, when you hear the theremin outside y'r window, the invasion has begun: "watch the skies, everywhere! keep looking. keep watching the skies!"

In the library:
Something
Of note





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Belongs in a box.









(laura sims stranger)

Arabic } Alps

brandon shimoda writes:

"i wanted to send you... an arabic translation of the third section (the food section) of the "trinity/neutrality/the draft" poem from THE ALPS, translated by lebanese poet sabah zwein. my girlfriend and i read in beirut and damascus a few weeks ago, and i read this poem on both occasions--the first time to a small crowd of devoted listeners (including the governor of south lebanon), following a 30 course meal, and preceding a dance party at a tiny, unnamed communist bar, with bowls of half-frozen fruit and a loaded rifle behind the counter, and the second to a packed, smoke-filled hotel basement dive bar in the new, dirty-glittery section of damascus. i only brought two copies of the book with me, but i gave them both to poets in beirut--sabah zwein being one of them, and iskandar habache, a poet and writer for the as-safir political daily, the other. but, flim now exists in lebanon, among the mattresses of cheese, silver earth rising off the mediterranean, and mid-day calls to prayer, with sandwiches."

abell } 2218

this galaxy cluster bends and magnifies light in a process called gravitational lensing. as a result, astronomers have been able to increase the power of earth and space telescopes enough to see redshift-10 galaxies, galaxies that formed shortly after the dark ages of the universe, galaxies that "may have kicked off the subsequent phase of reionization, in which ultraviolet starlight stripped electrons from hydrogen gas," causing galaxies to grow larger than the earliest galaxies (because reionized hydrogen "would have been too hot to clump together").

"secret caves" } beget } "pech de l'azé"

secret caves sez:

(0,0)
The Ghost of Khorasan

mausoleum
(in a moraine)
deposit

pech de l'azé sez:

12.
open uh ancient coffin
find.

uh shovel inside.


torpedo volume six "our first almost entirely graphic issue features comics, fake ads and other miscellany from the likes of jeffrey brown, paul o'connell, oslo davis, tim molloy, stanley donwood, ghost patrol, mandy ord, adam golaski, eric dando, laurie clancy and many more. comes with mini colour supplement and cover by the mysterious kingdom of ludd"

whut up, whut up: the golaski "miscellany" is excerpts from "pech de l'azé," a blog comments response to matthew klane's poem "secret caves."

postage is cah-razy fo non-australian buyers*, but torpedo is always gorgeous. get the complete set, get the postage over w/, + get joy.

the following is an except from an interview between adam golaski + torpedo editor chris flynn:

golaski: is it true, that on every shelf in every readings location is a nest full of the world's deadliest spiders?

flynn: we do have some scary creatures here, their bites create a gangrenous sore that never heals and eats slowly away at the flesh and yes, there have been three shark attacks in the past two weeks, but in only one case was the guy devoured. But we don't have guns!

[note from editor: flynn's response was edited heavily w/out permission. he may also not be real. this conversation may never have happened. flim forum is of the opinion that the ocean is mostly a bag of very salty potato chips.]

*an addendum from the torpedo offices: "good news! I just went to the post office and it turns out this issue sneaks under the weight limit as it's a bit slimmer than normal, so postage to the UK and US is half the usual exorbitant rate. it's $6.50 instead of $12.50, which is $5 US and about 3 quid in the UK. that might make it easier for your legions of fans to buy it. hope this helps."

seriously, dudes, you paid five to have amazon ship that dvd of "fluff house apocalypse: director's cut," + that was being shipped from, like, the blockbuster down the street from you, so, like, torpedo up, friends of flim.

drunken boat } myth-fueled slander pants

sat., aug. 15th, 7pm, new london, organized by hygienic art + drunken boat, held in the aardvark, a "a multi-media bash" an "anniversary celebration" for/of drunken boat, "a decade-old online literary journal."

the what what from hygienic's site:

"Headlining Mat Bevel, from the Surrealistic Pop Science Theatre in Tucson, AZ and the maestero of 'a gizmotronic fanfare of spunk, funk and kinetic junk,' and featuring rare video footage of Charles Olson, father of the Maximus Poems and the Black Mountain School, Harlem native and vocal deconstructor Latasha Natasha Diggs, Guggenheim Fellow and stereoscopic projectionist Zoe Beloff and New London's own native son, novelist and frequent contributor the New York Times, Richard Rand Cooper, among others. Share drinks and a memorable evening of literary alchemy and intermedia performance."

a slightly different but equally dubious what what from the new haven advocate:

"Mat Bevel from Tucson's Surrealistic Pop Science; a rare film of the late modernist poet Charles Olson; vocalist/dialectician Latasha Natasha Diggs; eclectic myth-fueled author/translator Adam Golaski; music-savvy poet Larissa Shmailo; new media artist Steve Ersinghaus, mainstream-friendly writer Rand Richards Cooper, plus a short film by stereoscopic projectionist Zoe Beloff."

+ last, from the drunken boat site, announcing the addition of another performer:

"Sabina Murray is the author of the novels Forgery (Grove, 2007), A Carnivore’s Inquiry, and Slow Burn. Her short story collection The Caprices was the winner of the 2002 PEN/Faulkner award. ...Associate Professor of English, Creative Writing, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst."

we at flim forum press have come to doubt the veracity of all this infromation.

you look cute } for you

living italian renaissance poet elisa gabbert's the french exit.

wordless post.

it's quite possible that she is k. lorraine graham's mother.

hot knees turns skirt red hot.

"i want to thank you for putting me back in my snail shell."

mud luscious press } a field of colors

400 copies of "a field of colors" by charles lennox were sent out in june by mud luscious press--if you've got a copy in your cupboard of tiny chapbooks but've yet to read it, bust it out now.

then, you'll wanna check out mlp here + here + you'll wanna study charles lennox too, who apparently suffers from dog-chewed fan wiring. time to get new dogs.

if y'r cupboard is bare, fear not: "a field of colors," was reprinted at keyhole: thas crazy goot nudes f'r yous.

chompity chompity chomp.

singing and omitting } words are A-OK.

we already knew this.

however this is a review from the future!

(since jennifer karmin's reading is/was awesome, go on august 9th to myopic books, 1564 n. milwaukee, at 7pm. but be careful! don't let your future self see you there--unless you want to ruin the universe.)

new genre } no. 6: it sings----

new genre no. 6 is 4 new stories--horror + science fiction--by stephen graham jones, eric schaller, michael filimowicz, + matthew pendleton, plus the essay "a sing economy" by adam golaski. the essay title is no coincidence, as golaski (me) is "the lazy half" of flim forum press, while he's also new genre: editor, publisher, etc. the essay takes up the the idea of a poet economy--as a number of us flim poets discussed (in part via poems--check out "a sing economy symposium")--+ pairs that with "the current state" of short fiction. golaski writes:

Every article I've read about the current state of the short story sets its focus not on the short story as a literary form but on the short story as a product nobody wants to buy.... Blame publishers, then blame editors, then blame writers, and not the other way around. Reader complacency may be impossible to overcome, but it will never be overcome if the only fiction on offer is pablum (and to bring it back to publishers, of the only fiction promoted is pablum).

I make this bold statement confident that the fiction in new genre no. 6 is very good, worthy of promotion and of your attention. of especial interest to poets will be the two science fiction stories, which emphasize language over sense (tho both make a wild + fantastic kind of sense).

the cover--see the front/back spread up top--was designed by jeremy withers, who also designed oh one arrow. as a result of jeremy's work, new genre no. 6 is a beautiful object.

"In speaking to the need for new forums and a greater seriousness, New Genre is extremely welcome. I support the journal whole-heartedly." ----Peter Straub

"...I think this magazine has the potential to really stick its thumb in the eye of literary snobbery." ----Jennifer Gomoll

art space } aug 8 } hartford

the libertine collective's upcoming "bestia phasmatis: animal spirits both benign and malevolent" ain't easy to suss--it's an art bacchanal inspired by bob barker and it's painted naked supermodels toting boxes of fluffy kittens. there's music by kate callahan and the kelvins, a duo marishka dance musical, there's ravi shankar, there's "interactive poetry & a writer's wall" (this will feature poets' drafts and etc.), and there's flim editor adam golaski, who'll read from "outland," a long poem dedicated to jessica smith. when interviewed, golaski said, "one day I'll finish 'outland'." brilliant.

when puppies and arthur schnitzler? August 8th 2009, 6:30 - 10:30. where? hartford artspace, 555 asylum ave., Hartford, CT. wherefore art thou? suggested donation of $5.00. fuzzy wuzzy? free brine and weir.

open letters monthly } poetry +

flim forum poet john cotter is the poetry editor at open letters, an online "arts and literature review." besides reviews, there's poetry--an easy-dose poem-a-month.

begin here + check f'r flim favorites such as kate schapira, kaethe schwehn, maureen thorson, elisa gabbert & kathleen rooney, shafer hall, + sampson starkweather. + if you missed it in theaters, there's che, ah, "being."

+

whiles y'r there, don't miss the OL blog----

harp & alter } the alps + the inland sea

jared white's review of the alps + the inland sea (published by tarpaulin sky).

white writes, "What animates both these books of Shimoda’s is the unknowability of the self even as it offers more and more angles, more ideas, more perceptions and experiences" + suggests that "It may be helpful to see the two books not as distinct projects, but rather as complementary angles on the same subject, the same interior/exterior geography with its troubles and anxieties."

let's encourage that reading: from Aug. 2nd - Sept. 2nd, if you can demonstrate that you ordered the inland sea (email us your receipt), you can purchase the alps for $10 ($4 off the cover price). this offer is only good for orders placed directly to flim forum press (i.e., checks only to the flim forum office).

march, 2009 } b-lo spf } a tale f'r children

here, fairy godmother jessica smith and magically transformed alix bamford assemble the flim forum table. look! it was beautiful!



then, this bird bought a copy of oh one arrow.



then, this bird bought a copy of a sing economy.



when christopher fritton said the fair was over and it was time to go home, matthew klane bellowed, "we never close!" his words were so mighty, they became neon.



but christopher really needed us out of there, so after he bought a copy of brandon shimoda's the alps, he sent a bear and a giant tire to trash our stuff and eat us.



eaten but not defeated, matthew and adam flew the bear into an ice cave at the bottom of niagra falls where we began work on jennifer karmin's aaaaaaaaaaalice.



greatly moved, the giant tire converted from radial to catholicism.



the end.

Book Sale!

Flim Forum Press volumes Oh One Arrow and A Sing Economy are now on sale for $8 each (over 50% off, includes S & H). Oh and Sing contain extensive chapbook-size selections from a wide range of exciting contemporary poets...


Oh One Arrow
ISBN 978-0-9790888-0-3
7x9, 208 pages

from Brandon Shimoda's "The Alps"; Thom Donovan's "Devotions"; poems by Jonathan Minton; Adam Golaski's "Voice Notes"; from Lori Anderson Moseman's "All Steel"; Katie Kemple's "Plant Poems"; Chris Fritton's "The String Witness"; poems by Eric Gelsinger; and Jacqueline Lyons; and John Cotter; prose poems + by Jeff Paris; a clutch of Michael Ives' lyric constructions; poems by Jaime Corbacho; Matthew Klane's "The- Associated Press"; meditations from "the 40 Stations of Mansour Al-Hallaj" by Pierre Joris; and Aaron Lowinger's blog project, "Moundz", in print! w/ cover and insert drawings by Luke Daly.

more info

A Sing Economy
ISBN 978-0-9790888-1-0
7x9, 256 pages

from Kate Schapira's "How We Saved the City"; Barrett Gordon as "Bartimus"; two of eleven cantos from Jennifer Karmin's "aaaaaaaaaalice"; from Stephanie Strickland's "Huracan's Harp"; from "The New Poetics" by Mathew Timmons; Kaethe Schwehn's "Tanka"s; "Sin is to Celebration", elisions by Amanda Ackerman and Harold Abramowitz; "Sketches" by Jaye Bartell; Jessica Smith's notebook-scrawled "Cortland"; from David Pavelich's "Boxelder"; "[Bestiary With A Broken Window & A Thin Though Not Unkind Smattering of Light]" by Erin M. Bertram; poems by Laura Sims - On Murder; from Deborah Poe's "Elements"; a collaboration, "Voyage", from a.rawlings and françois luong; from Michael Slosek's "A Sequence for Cinematic History"; from Kevin Thurston's "SPECIAL MANAGE MEET"; soundscapes by Hannah Rodabaugh; and "The A Down" by Tawrin Baker. w/ three fleeting films gracing the cover by Scott Puccio.

more info

To purchase both volumes, for $15...

The Alps

Read new reviews of Brandon Shimoda's The Alps by Ching-In Chen (white space, inevitable), Brandon Downing (cautious as a groom), Stephen Hong Sohn (such brutality, such violence), and Jared White (staring upward, wide-eyed).

More on The Alps

or:

Send a check for $16 to:

Flim Forum Press
PO Box 549
Slingerlands, NY 12159

Query: klane at flimforum dot com

Sin and Yes!

The Arrow as Aarow series, a satellite of House Press, has just published Sin is to Celebration, a beautiful collection of elisions from Harold Abramowitz and Amanda Ackerman. Flim Forum Press published a small, slightly sour, selection of these fleeting lyrics in our A Sing Economy.

also:

This Friday night, in Albany, the Yes, Reading! series presents Sing poets Deborah Poe and Laura Sims. The event will be held at The Social Justice Center, 33 Central Avenue, and will start at 7pm. Deborah's new book, Our Parenthetical Ontology, is out from Custom Words, and Laura's new book, Stranger, is just out from Fence Books.

Flim in Philly

Saturday, May 23rd
Flim Forum Press @ Robin's Bookstore
108 South 13th Street
Philadelphia
7pm

w/
Jennifer Karmin
Eric Gelsinger
Aaron Lowinger
Matthew Klane
Emily Abendroth
& Eli Drabman

Potlatch Poetry

Flim Forum is the featured press this month @ Potlatch Poetry, a site dedicated to the free exchange of poetry resources.

PotLatch Poetry promotes a gift and exchange economy surrounding poetry books, chapbooks, journals and ephemera: a revolving bookshelf, moving material through the hands of writers across the world. PotLatch is concerned with the inherent limitations of a regionalized, institutionalized, capitalized or otherwise constrained exchange of literature. It exists to enliven and expand a spirit of trading and gifting. Every item on PotLatch is either for free or trade.

Flim has posted three free copies each of Oh One Arrow and A Sing Economy.

Joshua Harmon/Andrew Zawacki

Flim Forum Press presents
a Yes, Reading! satellite event

Friday, April 24th
Upstate Artists Guild Gallery
247 Lark Street
Albany, NY
7pm

w/
Joshua Harmon and Andrew Zawacki

Joshua Harmon is the author of Scape (Black Ocean), a book of poems, and Quinnehtukqut (Starcherone Books), a novel. His work has appeared in many journals, including Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, jubilat, TriQuarterly, 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.

Andrew Zawacki is the author of three poetry books—Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman House), Anabranch (Wesleyan), and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia)—and of the chapbooks Arrow’s shadow (Equipage); Georgia (Katalanché), co-winner of the 1913 Prize; Roche limit (tir aux pigeons); Bartleby’s Waste-book (Particle Series); in motion from the Meridian, a collaboration with artist Jennifer Schuberth (Dusie Kollektiv); and Masquerade (Vagabond). His work has appeared in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande), Walt Whitman hom(m)age, 2005/1855 (Turtle Point), The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (Iowa), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner), and other anthologies. He teaches at the University of Georgia.

Weekend in Buffalo

Small Press Poetry Fest
Friday, March 20

Sugar City
19 Wadsworth Street
Buffalo, NY
7:00-12:00

Just Buffalo's Small Press Poetry reading series will host a celebration of small press poetry activity in Buffalo and beyond in advance of the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair. The presses involved are Slack Buddha, House Press, Flim Forum, Lil' Norton, Punch Press, Blazevox, Broke Magazine, Little Scratch Pad, and Bookthug.

Reading for Flim Forum Press, in the 8:00-8:30 slot, will be: Adam Golaski, Jaye Bartell, Jessica Smith, Eric Gelsinger, and Tawrin Baker.

And then...




The 3rd Annual 2009
Buffalo Small Press Book Fair
Saturday, March 21

Karpeles Manuscript Museum
453 Porter Avenue
Buffalo, NY
12pm-6pm

The Buffalo Small Press Book Fair is a regional one day event that brings booksellers, authors, bookmakers, zinesters, small presses, artists, poets, and other cultural workers (and enthusiasts) together in a venue where they can share ideas, showcase their art, and peddle their wares.

Remember this event is FREE and open to the public!

And then...




Electric City Music
Saturday, March 21

Neitzsche's
248 Allen Street
9pm
$3

w/
Line Fatigue (chicago, il)
Eric Unger (chicago, il)
Mock Syringa
Giant Science
Oak Orchard Swamp

poetry project + other flim nudes

Adam Golaski reports: "After I caught a show by my new favorite band Verge End (pictured above; a shot of them playing the Costume Shop near Union Sq.), I headed down East 14th to St. Marks (pictured below).



"I first went into the church proper; turns out the reading was in the lamppost. Surprisingly, a spacious room. See previous (lamp)post for a list of the readers, which did include me. Below are some shots of everyone after the reading."









The very next night, Jennifer Karmin, Matthew Klane, and Adam Golaski read at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn. Six cantos of Jennifer's Aaaaaaaaaaalice were performed. Adam's wife Zetta and daughter Elizabeth were there, as were the poets Melissa Goodrum, Thom Donovan, and Jeff Paris. Jenna Lawrence, the famed Columbia University biology professor, also made an appearance. Everyone reports having a wonderful time.

Flim Forum Press editors Adam Golaski and Matthew Klane announced that their next book--following the highly wonderful The Alps by Brandon Shimoda--will be Aaaaaaaaaaalice. Publication details to come soon.

There are no photos from Unnameable, because there was no light. The total absence of light rendered our cameras (and our eyes) useless. As famously stated in the film Event Horizon, "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

Flim Forum poet Katie Kemple has started a blog only Eric Gelsinger won't need to read Love Your Layoff. I actually quit my job so I could make better use of her wisdom.

Our next big post will be from Buffalo, where the Small Press Fair will celebrate its third year, and where Flim Forum Press will have a table. The night before the fair, some Flim poets will be reading, too: Adam Golaski, Jessica Smith, Eric Gelsinger, Jaye Bartell, and Tawrin Baker. I've heard that they all agreed to read good poems, except for Eric, who will only read awesome poems.

Project Photos

Here's a partial record of Flim's trip to the Poetry Project last Friday night. Many thanks to Nicole and Diana Wallace and Hamilton for the generous invite and many more to all the folks who came out!



Eric Gelsinger



Deborah Poe



John Cotter



Kate Schapira



Jessica Smith



Adam Golaski

The Alps on ThisRecording.com

Now, on ThisRecording.com, Jaye Bartell empties himself into the white squares which column through the heart of The Alps. Here is the introduction to his withholding:

The blank squares accompanying each poem in The Handmaidens and Bridesman section of The Alps struck me immediately, fascinated and moved me to respond. The squares display vivid possibility, actualized by the writing beneath them, poems that are far more than captions. Possibility, in fact, is the prevailing sentiment I’m left with; there is much to discover in The Alps, and the squares serve as a kind of field guide. They at once refuse to be empty, or to contain anything. The slightest suggestion of an image, –gold / lightning struck / water–, and the square floods. Turn the page, a new square is presented, empty, simple, but vulnerable to the foment of cognition, memory, grasp, and total loss.

Read the rest of Jaye's review here, In Which a Lack Should Speak Louder Than Words. Also, see Jaye make birds.