Founded by Carl Adamshick and Michael McGriff, Tavern Books is a publisher dedicated to "printing, promoting, and preserving works of literary vision." They are well aware that books are more than words and pay close attention to the design and printing in an effort to "create books that are exceptionally beautiful and a joy to hold. " They commission original artwork for every title they publish, and rightly believe that "the dialog between image and text is an essential, meaningful element of a reader’s experience." Both Adamshick and McGriff are accomplished poets in their own right who along with the Dickman twins, Michael...
Overstock as Art: The Reading Room at the Berkeley Museum of Art
Installation view. Photo: Sibila Savage “Somewhere to begin, with the most available of formats, the book. At times merely polemical or critical, using such availability as comment on itself — an intimate object in public space.” — Simon Cutts, forward to Some Forms of Availability"Museums are asking the same questions bookstores are...I mean, why go to a museum if you can just look at pictures online in high resolution? It's about the experience." says Lawrence Rinder, the director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.So when Ramsay Bell Breslin, an editor at Kelsey Street Press, conveyed her dilemma of having to either...
APRIL has arrived. A festival of small press and independent publishing takes root in Seattle
"Authors, Publishers and Readers of Independent Literature" March 22-31, 2012The seeds of APRIL can be found in the 2010 Small Press Bookfest, an ambitious project of the late Pilot Books. APRIL aims to harness the spirit that made Pilot Books a community space and locus for daring and innovative writing.The goal of the festival is to connect readers with independent literature and the authors and publishers of this relevant and vitalizing work. The festival aims to celebrate independent writing and publishing and to foster community amongst the artists and appreciators who help make it thrive.With a successful Kickstarter campaign behind...
Altering Louis L’Amour: ‘West of Dodge’ by Nico Vassilakis
Nico Vassilakis has been a cornerstone of the Seattle visual and concrete poetry scene for many years. He is a founding member of the "Subtext Collective" and was co-curator of the recently retired Subtext Reading Series, which for 15 years exposed Seattle to a plethora of new writing from across the country.His latest book, West of Dodge has recently been published by Ireland's Redfoxpress, a press dedicated "to experimental, concrete and visual poetry, or any work combining text and visual arts in the spirit of dada or fluxus." It is the latest work in their series C'est mon dada.The book...
Resubscribe or Else!
click to enlargeThis little gem was laid into an issue of George Hitchcock's seminal kayak literary magazine. From 1964-1984 the magazine, along with kayak press, was one of the premier literary magazines in the country. Though the focus leaned toward surrealist, imagist, and political poetry Hitchcock published early books by Raymond Carver, Charles Simic, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin and James Tate.Hitchcock was also well known for his rejection slips which would often include an old woodcut or image he found along with the bad news.Above is one of his subscription renewal notices. It reads:Your subscription expires with this issue:to avoid...