video poem | swallow #3

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books & objects & more

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For the last year or so, I've been brainstorming a way to make my books & objects series available that is a) not prohibitively costly and b.) allows some flexibility to tap in and out at will as a subscriber. I finally got my ducks in a row and started a Patreon. You can subscribe to the Books & Objects as it's always been, but there are also lower priced tiers (like a custom postcard courtesy of moi sent your way each month for $5, a print of the month for $10.) I plan to still make most projects available in the shop, but this gets you a slightly sweeter deal on them and a first crack at the limited edition stuff.

https://www.patreon.com/kristybowen

dancing girl press notes | september 2020

Fall again, and even in this strange year, I am still  delighting in the work that I am just now digging into from this year's submissions pool. .  Since I haven't been able to read much at all with pandemic brain, I am moving slowly, but still moving nonetheless. Sometimes I feel capable and productive.  Sometimes I feel like I am drowning.  That it is all too much.  Not the work or the press, but more the mental real estate I feel is crushing me sometimes. How can I think about this and this when there is that, and oh god, now THAT?  But from everyone I talk to, it's a common feeling, so I sit tight and wait until it passes.  And it usually does. 

I've spent a considerable part of this summer holding off new releases in order to wrangle the orders from the earlier part of the year into something manageable. Since I can't keep much inventory in the small space I now work in since leaving the studio, most books, except very new ones are print-on-demand, so the lags were getting to be a bit unruly, especially for older material. Thankfully, a slightly lighter schedule this year has been a godsend during the pandemic, since I'm not sure I'd be able to function to keep things going at their usual pace, which was always hectic, even when my mind was better capable of dealing with it. 

But then again, I remind myself the import of the work in this world.  Especially now, when it seems least important while everything is chaos and sadness. It is just poetry and poetry is a very little fish in a sea.  But when you are in the fish, it feels gigantic.  Or something like that. This was not the year I planned so hopefully in my little planner so smugly organized  in January, but it is the year we got nevertheless. I am still going to try to salvage or savor as much of it as I can. 

collapsologies

I really don't think I set out at the beginning of the year to write a book about capitalism and it's evils, and yet, somehow I did.  It probably has everything to do with the fact that I was starting a series of poems right as the lock-downs kicked in and the arguments over people's lives vs. economic stability came to the forefront.  Of course, at first it was hard to write at all, even from the relative safety that allowed me to work from home (but of course what was also tinged with job-related anxiety because most of my work requires access to the library's physical collection.)  I had been meaning to write poems about my favorite horror film, The Shining (and on any given day, perhaps my favorite film no matter the genre). It seemed fitting to work on that series under quarantine, especially since I've often thought that sort of isolation, barring evil bloodbaths, would be so nice for my creative brain. 

It was rough to get started, but once I did, it didn't end up being the series I thought it would.  Then there was bloom, which was less about  economics, but very much about the pandemic. And then. my tabloid inspired pieces, which are my very favorite, and now, as I round it out, the plague letters.  In august, the bones of the book began to take shape, and scribbled in my notebook, from around the time the quarantine started I had a title that was ever so perfect. COLLAPSOLOGIES.  I was thinking about disease and colony collapse and also financial and societal collapse.  That is the soup from which these months and months of poems come from, and I am excited to pull them all together and see what I have as soon as I finish the last few epistolary poems, likely by mid-October. 

I initially though this one might be good to get out into the world sooner rather than later, but I feel I need to site with them a little longer as a whole--but keep an eye out for some smaller bits to make their way out, be they zine/chapbook projects (hint, hint, Halloween seems like a perfect time to drop overlook) and some of the other individual fragments will be appearing in journals. I have some design ideas for some of the other series that may become something. 

eleanor and the tiny machines

 

http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/eleanorzine.pdf

I am planning a whole bunch of Halloween related treats in terms of projects and new releases, and since this one was ready (and has actually been ready since around March but Covid put a dent in my plans) I decided to drop it a little early. It's just a lil freebie, but it sets a tone (and prefaces some other things up my sleeve for this season).  I've been sitting on a lot of finished projects and fretting over what to do with all of  them, so maybe the answer is just to get them out there. 

The eleanor series collages actually came first one day while I was playing with some botanical images, and after I had a few, I set to telling a little ghost story (and really with that cover image, what could it be BUT a ghost story?)  I've considered it and the summer house, though they tell different narratives, to exist in the same sort of universe (though actually they wound up in two different book manuscripts (feed and animal, vegetable, montser.) Even still, there are similar threads in each.

It's the perfect little book for this time of year--slightly summer and lush with florals, but with spooky undertones. Enjoy!

notes & things | 9/15/2020

 

 I've recently took a little inventory of new projects and while this year has been a doozy on all other fronts, and while I was paralyzed a bit when it came to writing and creating through the spring, there is still quite a bit of work to show for the summer months--the overlook poems, the tabloid pieces, the bloom project, and now, my series of plague letters.  While visual art feels a little bit harder to settle in with (mostly due to time constraints) I am enjoying the video projects. On the whole, a productive season as we settle into fall.  I have a few more epistolaries and then I'm not sure where to go next, but we'll see what I'm in the mood for.  I have a notebook full of projects and ideas that are ripe for the picking.

Today, warmer weather, but it's supposed to get colder by the end of the week. There has also been strange milky white skies from the smoke in the west way high in the atmosphere.  People are dying and the worlds on fire, so it seems hard to exist sometimes. To person sometimes. I've been busy, so less for the doomscrolling now that the semester has started and my days are full with reserves and ILL.  I spent the weekend in Rockford, which at least granted some outdoor campfire s'more activity in a summer that has barely been a summer.  As always, I most like coming home. 

I do not know what fall holds but am watching closely. Some of the trees in the park along Lake Shore already have a brownish tint in the right light, so it's coming--the meatier parts of fall and this weekend I will start swapping out the summer dresses for more sweaters and heavier fabrics. While I would say spring is my fave season in general, fall is moreso for the clothes.  I second hand shopped some newer things last month that are already hanging in the wardrobe and I can't wait to wear them, but figure I'll get a few more summer dresses in while the weather holds. And of course, jacket and coat weather, which is the only thing that makes winter bearable at times.

video poem | swallow #2

 

the poet's zodiac

is now available in all it's dark sparkly loveliness.

sagittarius

 

 

For every broken phonebooth, you trade a tooth in pocket. A rusted locket.  The back parking lot grown thick with weeds.  In the mornings, tread carefully.  The dead collect their objects with startling accuracy.  Recall their devotions as thunderstruck, as dumb luck.   Fuck with the lights in your kitchen, and still the witch moths flicker at the windows, eating their way through the screens.  Breathe carefully in the dark.  Pull at the roots in your cellar until nothing is left but stone, smooth as a coffin. Where you bury the black rabbits and their beginnings.  Their terrible skins.

You can get a copy here!